Well-made, well-scripted, well-directed - but you finish The Special Relationship feeling puzzled

"The Special Relationship" is another in the long line of well-made BBC/HBO movies, well acted, well-scripted, well-directed, nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have a great interior life. Like The Queen, like Frost/Nixon, like many others, it's a gloss on history, a reminder of a time we lived through, and, for Americans, a different perspective on familiar events. You have to like the film - an examination of the working friendship between Blair and Clinton - but you also leave it feeling kind of puzzled: how much is based on the historical record (even on memoirs), and how much is purely fictional? It's not quite a documentary, though it does effectively use documentary footage, especially at the end when we see (the real) Blair with (the real) George W. Bush, and it's just painful to see that stilted and unpleasant partnership after the intelligent and edgy friendship between Blair and Clinton (very well acted by Dennis Quaid). Very interesting to see how the two men used each other from time to time to build domestic support - Blair getting help from Clinton regarding N Ireland, at no apparent cost and to no apparent, immediate, benefit for Clinton, the favor later returned when Blair stood up for Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal. The film is primarily from the British POV of course, but for an American viewer the interest level, no matter what, will still be focused on Clinton, or actually the Clintons, because some of the best scenes are the domestics between Bill and Hillary (Hope Davis).