Totally Under Control

Alex Gibney is a well-respected maker of political documentaries from the days of films like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room in 2005 and I get the sense that he has become a bit of an industry now, a bit like Ken Burns, but Totally Under Control is a great example of a team of strong communicators building a case.

If there are ultimate takeaways from this timely, terrifically made, truly terrifying and thought-provoking documentary, it’s that despite a narrative peddled by some, public health officials shouldn’t be the ones to blame for the “home of the brave’s” death toll and economic disaster.

To put it in a pop-culture context, "Totally Under Control" is the "Avengers: Infinity War" of corona-docs, wrapping with the snap.

Gibney and Co posit the president's vain mismanagement as the differentiating factor, hardly a revelation even when presented with more infuriating immediacy than newsprint can manage.

If you're wondering exactly how we got here on the COVID-19 pandemic, 'Totally Under Control' is essential viewing.

There are no cheap shots or in-person ambushes here; the polemics are sober, restrained and all the more authoritative for it.

A calm indictment of lethal presidential incompetence.

Does it also expand our understanding of what's been happening to us? I think it does. Mr. Gibney and his colleagues provide analysis and context, a world view of a world-shattering event, as well as the clarity of a timeline uninterrupted by commercials.

The film is a quietly enraged, and enraging, assault on Donald Trump's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the second half of the film, as the U.S. death toll starts to mount exponentially and there’s a chronic but avoidable shortage of masks and respirators, the film becomes – rather ghoulishly, perhaps – more compelling.