Shoot-from-the-hip political satire about a cooked-up conflict with innocuous Albania in order to deflect attention, two weeks ahead of the election, from a Presidential sex scandal. We briefly hear, never clearly see, the President himself; the principal players are his damage-control trouble-shooter (Robert De Niro) and a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) recruited on the principle that "war is show business." The storyline goes way beyond the broadest comic license, and the agitated visuals of "reality TV" do not disguise the staginess. There is one instructive scene of piecing together bogus war footage with the aid of computers ("They used the same process with the last Schwarzenegger movie"), although this bears more on Hollywood business-as-usual than on any hypothesized Hollywoodization of news and politics; and there is an amusing spoof of a "We Are the World" song of inspiration. The best thing in the movie, though, is the light, jaunty, delicate, sparse, aloof musical accompaniment by Mark Knopfler. With Anne Heche, Willie Nelson, William H. Macy, Woody Harrelson; directed by Barry Levinson. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd