Embedded Live

The questionable roots of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is the focus of this filmed record (originally broadcast on the Sundance Channel) of Tim Robbins' savage off-Broadway satire Embedded Live, which offers a skein of barbed sketches tracing how the situation in Iraq (called Gomorrah here) is viewed from multiple viewpoints: by the over-burdened soldiers who find themselves in the midst of battle, by the obsequious media who tag along and lap up everything the military spin doctors insist is fact, and by a Greek chorus of masked neo-cons from “The Office of Special Plans” who plant falsehoods with reckless abandon. The latter group consists of characters with punny names like Rum-Rum, Woof, and Cove (rhymes with Rove and played by Robbins). The basic thread running throughout is the deliberate propaganda attempt to make the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch seem like an exercise in bold heroics when, in fact, it was an amateurish made-for-TV melodrama. All of this would be hilariously cynical if the situation in Iraq were not a blood-soaked debacle. Robbins deserves credit for the creative manner in which he condemns the incompetence and dishonesty of the war and its architects, although many viewers may find the subject too close and painful to be humorous. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (P. Hall)