Several images from The Fog of War stuck in my mind long after I saw the film at a small Manhattan screening room. The striking resemblance between the young Robert S. McNamara, the former US secretary of defence, and Donald Rumsfeld, the current occupant of that office; McNamara, shouting that the cold war wasn't cold at all - "Hell, it was a hot war!" and the frightening detail with which the 87-year-old recalls memos and White House discussions about the war in Vietnam.

Gripping, surely. But is this the stuff of a cinematic and cultural phenomenon? As McNamara asks in the film, "Who the hell is going to pay $8 to listen to McNamara for an hour and three-quarters?"