Agents of Chaos

This is a desperately complex story with multiple threads. It's a more sedate Active Measures, which is no bad thing.

Let's be fair, the full unclassified version of events won't appear for another 50 years.

Just in time for another chaotic and frightening U.S. presidential campaign, Alex Gibney delivers an all-too-timely reminder of how the Russians tried to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election, sow discord and division, and promote Trump. Having established in Part 1 who the Russian saboteurs were (including Russian military intelligence, the GRU), Gibney and his extensive team of investigators focus this two-hour Part 2 episode on what happened in the U.S. Follow the money and the power plays. Watch Trump's sleazy campaign manager Paul Manafort in action, bouncing between Russian oligarchs, the Ukraine, and the world of Trump Inc. It's painful but riveting viewing for any patriotic American.

BECAUSE IT'S VERY DRY AND QUITE EXPANSIVE.

Now buckle in because that's the only light-hearted bit you're getting. Gibney's sprawling account of Russian ties to the 2016 US election is a massive achievement and rather meticulous - and like any piece of investigative journalism it doesn't really answer any questions or provide many simple truths. It's pleasingly intricate and despite being deeply American doesn't opt for many of the hyperbole that mires US documentary work.

In terms of the subject matter there's rather a lack of American investigative journalists - you've got a Yahoo! News journo but most of the US talking heads are sincere but biased big-hitters like former deputy director of the FBI or National Security Council member Celeste Wallander. This is a choice of course, and hearing from some of the central players in the narrative is quite compelling, although it means that you only get the merest tantalizing glimpse of the larger social context for a lot of what it all means beyond fairly high tier political figures, however odd they may be.

As other reviewers have hinted, as enormous as this documentary is, there is likely an even larger story at play here and these elements that Gibney has laboriously pieced together is only the view from the present. What revelations are to come are going to be all the more fascinating - and hopefully will be communicated in a slightly more succinct fashion.

This documentary takes all the pieces you have read about and puts them together in chronological order to explain what happened to our election in 2016. You will be glued to your seat. The last sentence of this documentary will be burned into my mind till the day I die. A "must see"

Whether you're a republican, a Democrat, a member of the Green party, independent party, whatever, or wherever your allegiances lie . Just give it a watch and make your OWN decision. I feel as if that's something in and of itself that the majority of people don't do nowadays. WATCH THE DAMN THING AND HAVE YOUR OWN OPINION. All that said, it's pretty straightforward, pretty black and white, and definitely sheds light on a great many issues that more Americans should be painfully aware of.