Metacritic reviews

If you want to hear juicy inside tales of the scams devised by Lee Atwater, the right-wing visionary of media-age dirty tricks, you'll find loads of them in Boogie Man.

Generous in spirit and nimble in technique, this riveting documentary about the Republican operative (who died of a brain tumor in 1991) reveals a scrappy genius rife with contradictions.

A hugely entertaining, efficiently crafted documentary about a ruthless, if undeniably clever, American political force.

Director Stefan Forbes interviews a slew of victims and beneficiaries of the Atwater attack machine and, in the process, gives us an even-handed portrait of a man who, as much as anybody, bears responsibility for the toxicity of high stakes political campaigning on both sides of the aisle.

Boogie Man is nonetheless required viewing for anyone obsessed with the 2008 race.

Not the stuff of greatness, but you couldn't ask for a better time to see it.

Deeply influential, even to his enemies, Atwater's career is viewed here with fascination and some sympathy.

Less persuasive is Forbes's perfunctory, psychologically thin rummage through Atwater's childhood for a traumatic event that would explain his utter ruthlessness.

While Atwater exerted notable influence on contemporary politics, this account of his career doesn't make for particularly absorbing viewing.

A documentary that uses against Atwater images of lynch mobs, decades-old racist comments of his onetime boss Strom Thurmond, and a clip of Bryant Gumbel calling him "the architect of the evil campaign."