LBJ

The movie starts with LBJ (Woody Harrelson) and wife Lady Bird (Jennifer Jason Leigh) waiting for the arrival of President Kennedy (Jeffrey Donovan) at the Dallas airport in 1963 with rival liberal Texas Senator Yarborough (Bill Pullman). In flashbacks, he promises Bobby Kennedy (Michael Stahl-David) not to run for President. He is asked to join the ticket by JFK over Bobby's object. As VP, he cajoles leading southern Democrat Senator Richard Russell (Richard Jenkins). The second half follows the JFK assassination.

There is superb acting from Harrelson in a character study of the President from director Rob Reiner. There are some glaring physical drawbacks. First thing I noticed is that Harrelson is not quite the towering presence that the President was in real life. There is a real need to have that hulking sense on the screen. It's partly his physical presence that contributes to his power. In the same vein, Jeffrey Donovan doesn't have the pretty boy face of JFK especially if the movie keep harping on that fact. It wouldn't matter if those two Presidents aren't so defined by those characteristics. What gives the movie its power comes from LBJ calling, cajoling, and negotiating with the political world. It is more problematic to try to climax with his speech which is not his biggest strength. The climax should be the passing of the civil rights bill. Instead, it is covered in the closing text. Overall, Harrelson does an admirable job despite his physical dissimilarities. Outstanding support comes from Richard Jenkins. It's a solid biopic.

I was 10 when LBJ became president. I associated him more with possibly putting me in Vietnam than anything else. It wasn't a good impression. This movie and Harrelson's excellent portrayal fleshes out the man as someone who had mastered the art of political give and take, who was as powerful a senator as you could become, and yet someone who needed people's approval and even love. If you expect to see LBJ the great manipulator and master politician, you'll only get a little of that. More, you'll get exposed to LBJ's complex relationships with his wife Lady Bird, John and Bobby Kennedy, Kennedy's presidential staff, and one or two congressmen such as Senator Russell of Georgia. Set against a huge backdrop, this is still an intimate movie of LBJ the man. My wife and I both enjoyed it.

Woody Harrelson completely disappears into the role of LBJ.

Great acting. A good inside look at LBJ and the aftermath of JFK's assassination, especially for those not alive when it happened.

Worth a rental.

When I saw the cast for this and then saw the average rating of 6.0 I thought, there must be something terribly wrong with this movie. There isn't! The cast is good through and through and Woody Harrelson which I feel is still underrated is tremendous as LBJ. It takes a little time to get the focus of the movie but it becomes clear after about a third of the film and it all builds too a very strong ending. If you like this kind of movies, you will definitely enjoy LBJ.

When you make a movie about historic events it is always hard. People will criticize it is not accurate enough or that you portrayed the person to positive or to negative depending on who it is. To sum it up, there is a lot of expectation of what a movie like LBJ should be. And people are always disappointed if they don't get what they expect. In this case I can see that people are maybe disappointed that the movie ends where LBJ's presidency begins. There is much more to tell but that was not the intend of this film so I can criticize that. From a technical standpoint, cast, direction, music, script and so on this a really good movie.

If you want to see a similar take on LBJ but with a focus more on LBJ's presidency I recommend to watch "All the way" from 2016 with Bryan Cranston as LBJ.

A film like this is viewed through the lense of our experience. In the 60s I was politically active, adored Bobby Kennedy and despised LBJ. So naturally I think the film was too kind to LBJ and too unkind to Bobby. But let's put that aside and look at the film itself.

The acting by Woody Harrelson and Jennifer Jason Leigh is excellent. You think you're watching the real thing. They are the only two actors who do such great job, and the others do OK.

There is a real sense that this is a docudrama rather than a film.

My main criticism is that the film makers stopped in mid film. The story of LBJ didn't end with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It continued through the devastation of the Vietnam War. The true story is how Johnson squandered the legacy of JFK with his foreign policy, and all that is left out.