'War Game' Is a Political Thriller That Offers a Stark Look at the 2024 Election

It’s January 6, and thousands of insurgents have amassed on the National Mall in Washington D.C. They soon begin making their way to the U.S. Capitol to contest the results of the most recent presidential election, in which the incumbent president has won reelection. Claiming fraud, they plan to take over the Capitol and disrupt the official counting and certification of the electoral votes. Accompanying them is a contingent of rogue, armed D.C. National Guard troops who, instead of protecting the Capitol and lawmakers hunkered down inside, have joined in the efforts to breech the building.

Meanwhile, the president and his advisers are in the Situation Room trying to decide the best course of action to de-escalate the conflict and head off a coup. But soon they get word that similar armed protests are popping up across the country with more insurgents making their way to their respective state capitols, again, with assistance from active military personnel. They all have the same end goal — to overturn the results of the presidential election.

Some of the plot points of this storyline are certainly familiar, given what we all witnessed take place in Washington in 2021. But this tale takes a somewhat different turn. Set in the year 2025, the scenario is a purely hypothetical (if frighteningly realistic) tabletop exercise designed to play out what might happen if the results of the upcoming election are again disputed — this time by a better organized and armed militia group who has received buy in for their cause from radicalized members of the military.

Welcome to “War Game,” the new documentary co-directed by Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber which screens this Saturday, July 20, at the UA East Hampton Cinema as the second offering in HamptonsFilm’s SummerDocs series.

“This came across the transom through some colleagues, and I thought, this is extraordinary,” said Moss when asked in a recent interview how he learned about the exercise. “It’s something I’ve never seen before and I didn’t know what was going to happen. The film was a documentary, it was improvisational theater, it was speculative science fiction — all of these things.

“I’d never seen a documentary that combined all of those elements. So I reached out to Tony,” added Moss, who co-directed the film “Full Battle Rattle” with Gerber in 2008, “and we decided to take it on together.”

“Jesse knows me pretty well and what sort of formal experiments and content makes me tick,” said Gerber. “Also, a call from Jesse is exciting. The opportunity to collaborate again is something we’ve been talking about for I don’t know how many years. So what excited me, in addition to the opportunity to be part of the conversation at this moment in American history, was to feel proactive in some way, like we are contributing.”

“Our film, at the end of the day, isn’t about vote this way or vote that way,” added Gerber. “It’s about being engaged. It’s about understanding what the stakes are.”

“War Game” was shot on a single day — January 6, 2023 and the unscripted exercise, which was filmed by Moss, Gerber and their crew, was staged by the nonpartisan veterans organization Vet Voice. It took place over the course of six hours in a building just steps from the U.S. Capitol.

Recruited to portray roles in the exercise representing the president and his advisors, (the Blue Cell) were actual former administration and elected officials, both Republicans and Democrats, who have served in five previous presidential administrations. They include former Montana governor Steve Bullock in the role of incumbent President Hotham, former U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota as senior advisor to the president, and retired Major General Linda Singh as the chief of the Maryland National Guard as well as people who worked in the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, Homeland Security and other departments. Assembled in the Situation Room, they receive periodic updates from the game masters (aka the White Cell) who decide when to drop in new key pieces of information or news reports about the quickly escalating situation.

On the other side of this exercise and in a room down the hall sits Kris Goldsmith, a U.S. Army veteran, who plays the Red Cell leader, and his operative, portrayed by Marine Corps veteran Chris Jones. These are the leaders of the insurrectionists and they fuel the situation from their end primarily through their computers, releasing videos of the losing candidate, Robert Strickland, imploring military personnel to join the effort of their Biblical-based sovereign citizen movement — The Order of Columbus. They also create false flag social media posts in an effort to convince the Blue Cell that their movement is stronger and more organized than it actually is, hoping the government will overreact with a disproportionate response against civilians.

Overseeing it all is Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, who as the game’s producer, determines the pacing and complications of the exercise with help from game consultants, including retired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman. The exercise was created in response to an op ed that appeared in the Washington Post in December 2021. This piece was written by three retired generals who expressed concern that the next coup might be successful and accomplished with help from radicalized active-duty members of the military.

Described as a stress-test of the national security system, this is a documentary — but it looks like a narrative film, and in a recent interview, Moss and Gerber explained that once they were given permission by Vet Voice to film it, they set out to build realistic sets to heighten the feel of the potential stakes.

“The thing that really excited me was the opportunity to document something that is artificial — a theatrical exercise with people who are role playing, and that through a theatrical alchemy, it becomes more real than real,” said Gerber, who has a background in theater. “Those kinds of opportunities don’t come along every day.”

“The way that theater works on an audience is what the Greeks called ‘catharsis’ — when through identification and empathy with characters and with a situation, you are transported, you are moved, you are changed as an audience member,” he said. “And this was an opportunity to do that with a film.”

Moss added that the whole concept came with a tremendous amount of risk for the filmmakers.

“I think we wanted to lean into that risk, not knowing whether these role players could play the parts,” said Moss. “We didn’t have control over who was being cast. We didn’t know whether the exercise itself would be dramatically interesting and politically resonant, so we had to put all our chips on the table and roll the dice.

“It wasn’t until the exercise started and we had our camera feeds that we thought, ‘Oh my God, this is like being in the White House Situation Room in this moment of crisis, watching a president and his advisors struggle through this enormously consequential decision-making process,’” said Moss.

Though the film came together quickly and was shot on a single day, it took a long time to edit because the filmmakers wanted to explore the backstories of some of the game designers.”

“As we got to know them, Janessa, the organizer at Vet Voice, and some of the other people involved, like Alex Vindman, who of course we know from the news, they are really impressive, inspiring people who made us feel in these dark times quite hopeful,” said Moss. “So I think through the turbulence of the current political moment, being on tour with them, engaging in conversation with them makes us feel like we are doing something constructive and useful and hopefully safeguarding democracy.”

Gerber also finds there is a kind of therapy in being able to engage with audiences after screening the film.

“Since we premiered at Sundance, we’re six months out, the world has changed so much, and the news cycles have changed so much,” said Gerber. “And in a funny way, the film feels like a different film. It’s evolved with each screening. Even though it’s the same film, it changes in terms of how it works on an audience. The film evokes emotion. That emotion takes many forms, but to have the opportunity to make something that generates feeling at this moment in time is a rare opportunity.”

“When we shot the film, Trump was really on the periphery — banned from social media, not considered to be the presumptive Republican nominee,” said Moss. “But we knew the issues at stake, use of the Insurrection Act and the deployment of American troops on domestic soil and extremism in the military. Those are, in a sense, evergreen issues that regardless of the outcome of this election will matter.

“We continue to have more political violence, more chaos and instability in our political system,” Moss added. “And this is from the coup handbook — the deployment of military forces to suppress domestic dissent. I think it’s important that Americans understand what those constitutional powers are and what the weaknesses are in our system.”

Though initially, the representatives of Vet Voice had concerns about allowing Moss and Gerber to film the exercise, in the end, they were pleased with the results.

“It was important for us as artists to have freedom to tell the story we wanted to tell,” said Moss. “So that was a nonnegotiable position. At the same time, we didn’t want to give a handbook to insurrectionists, so we made sure that the film itself was vetted by people who could say, there’s not a threat here for that.

“They had not planned to build a real set, and as we built our relationship with them, they were open to that idea because they felt that if the gameplay could be elevated and the players could feel like they were really stepping into what was an approximation of the White House Situation Room — they would invest their roles and their actions with more intensity, more conviction,” said Moss. “ So I think it served both their purpose and ours to be able to do that. Through Tony’s relationship in the theater world, we brought in incredibly talented Broadway production designers to help us conceptualize this kind of theatrical set that both draws from the real Situation Room and a Dr. Strangelove sort of theatrical set.”

At the conclusion of the exercise, the Vet Voice game producers prepared a lengthy written report which was shared with current policymakers. After seeing a cut of the film they realized that the documentary adds great impact to the report.

“Not everybody in government who’s handed this 100 page report is actually going to read it cover to cover,” said Gerber. “But a 93-minute film is a lot easier to digest. So they are currently quite thrilled and as a stakeholder and partner, have been very, very invested in our theatrical rollout.”

Two of the most intriguing characters in the film are the real-life veterans leading the Red Cell who understand first-hand the motivations and mindset that would lead a soldier to become radicalized and join insurrectionists to overthrow the government.

“When we learned that Vet Voice was working with Kris Goldsmith and Chris Jones, his fellow veteran, who are experts in the far right and come with moral authority and experience, I think that’s what made this an exceptional opportunity,” said Moss. “We spent time with Kris before the exercise began. You see some of that footage in the film. And he’s just an incredibly powerful voice. Both of them are actually brilliant, feeling guys and committed. They’re patriots, too. They could take those energies into a much darker place, and I think one of the things that does give us some hope is, despite the number of military veterans we know who were involved in the J-6 insurrection, there are people like Kris and Chris who are doing everything within their power and using their skills as veterans to keep the ship of state afloat.”

When asked for their personal takes on the exercise, and whether in the end it left them more or less confident in the country’s ability to stave off a coup, Gerber said, “The scariest revelation for me is just how much of our democracy is based on norms of behavior. There’s this sort of gentleman’s agreement that there is a peaceful transfer of power. And along comes Trump and says, ‘Well, you know, why do we have to do it that way?’ and challenges assumptions of how it’s always worked. It’s terrifying. And I think the revelation that it is that fragile. This is an opportunity to shore it up.”

“One of the things that gave me faith in this exercise and its legitimacy was the inciting incident — the three retired generals who wrote that this is something we need to do,” said Moss. “Whether it’s Janessa Goldbeck or Alex Vindman, these are veterans who’ve said, ‘We need to look ourselves, at this institution and its weaknesses.’ This is not from without. This is from within.”

And if, by chance, you still think this scenario sounds far-fetched, just take a look at last Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. There, on the front page, is a story about conservative allies of the Republican Party who are already engaged in a methodical effort in battleground states to contest an election that hasn’t happened by falsely arguing it is already rigged against their candidate.

Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber’s “War Game” screens on Saturday, July 20, at 7 p.m. at Regal UA East Hampton Cinema, 30 Main Street, East Hampton as part of HamptonsFilm’s SummerDocs series. A Q&A with directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss follows the screening. Tickets are $35 at hamptonsfilmfest.org. The film will premiere at the Film Forum in New York City on August 2. For more information and screening dates, visit wargamefilm.com.