Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Flynn’ on VOD, a Fawning Documentary Detailing Michael Flynn’s War with the “Deep State”

Flynn (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is a documentary about Michael Flynn, executive produced by Michael Flynn and directed by nobody, although that might also be Michael Flynn – or maybe producer Scott Wiper, whose name is prominently credited in the movie. Anyway, Flynn, as you may be aware, is what wafflers might call a “controversial figure”: a current Christian nationalist and QAnon supporter who had a lengthy career in the military (Army general, counterterrorism expert, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama) and was National Security Advisor for 23 days under President Trump until he resigned as a key figure in the Russiagate kerfuffle. This documentary primarily focuses on Flynn’s life and career between roughly 2014 and 2020, and is wholly from Flynn’s point of view. It paints him as an aggrieved victim of political persecution – key promotional art puts his face in the crosshairs of a rifle scope – and features 100 percent sympathetic commentary from Flynn’s family members, and miscellaneous cohorts, Tucker Carlson being the most famous among them. From here, it’s your choice to watch, but be known that it’s nothing more than autobiographical hooray-for-Flynn propaganda.

FLYNN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Please note, it takes approx. 90 minutes of this 127-minute doc before someone uses the phrase “the deep state.” That’s because it avoids talking about Flynn’s right-wingnut tendencies – although they’re definitely strongly implied, and at times feel ready to ambush the viewer like a kitten leaping out from under the bed – and presents itself as a straightforward documentary about a guy who was railroaded by the corrupt United States government. Flynn’s tagline reads, “Deliver the truth. Whatever the cost,” which prompts one to consider the gradients of truth: you’ve got objective truth, normative truth and subjective truth, and this film is very clearly the latter. 

And so we get very dramatic music in the film’s opening moments as Flynn indulges a metaphor: He grew up near the Atlantic, in Rhode Island. He loves the water and is a passionate surfer, but is frequently reminded of the intense power of the ocean. There was a time in his life when he felt like he was drowning – cue the swelling, morose choir – but he never gave up. He talks about how he spent 33 years in the military, engaging in wars overseas, before eventually coming to the realization that “The worst enemy I’m going to face in my life is right here in America.” 

Who, exactly, is this enemy? The documentary never really offers an explicit answer, but it details how Flynn rebelled against entrenched systems of government and paid the price: Under Obama, he was forced to retire as DIA director in 2014 when, he says, he threatened the bureaucracy with assertions about how the U.S.’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan actually made the country more vulnerable to terrorism. Under Trump, he resigned as National Security Advisor after being accused of lying about his communications with Russian diplomats in the wake of investigations about Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election; Flynn claims “I was just doing my job” as a close adviser to the President.

The rest of the documentary gets lost in the weeds of this roughly six-year narrative. There’s a scene in which Flynn brings former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson into a room filled with printouts and photos linked with strings that Flynn says was assembled by supporters of his to illustrate the conspiracy against him. There’s biographical fodder about Flynn, told by his siblings. There’s images of government figures on playing cards, showing how all of this is a political game that Flynn isn’t willing to play. There’s commentary by journalists and political insiders, all of whom don’t seem to exist in the mainstream (and are almost certainly proud of it). 

A couple of things the movie would like us to call bombshells are also revealed: Flynn pled guilty during the Russia investigation, he says, because his son Michael G. Flynn – who formed a lobbying group together after Flynn’s 2014 retirement – was also under threat of indictment, and the elder Flynn made the plea deal to keep his son out of trouble. (The younger Flynn tearfully talks about how he harbored thoughts of suicide at this time, but didn’t indulge them because he’d just become a father.) Flynn floats theories about why JFK was assassinated and how corporations and banks and social media companies are in control of everything and that the major American journalistic entities are in bed with the CIA – all stuff presented as facts but with nothing beyond take-my-word-for-it assertions as supporting evidence. And there’s the revelation that Flynn graciously exited Trump’s cabinet by giving the prez a hug, which Flynn quickly corrects as “a big man-hug” – because nobody around here would want to appear to be even the least bit gay, you know.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: How the Daily Wire didn’t grab this doc and put it next to Lady Ballers is beyond me. Otherwise, PBS’s Frontline documentary Michael Flynn’s Holy War offers a different view on the guy.

Performance Worth Watching: Michael G. Flynn gets the trophy for being the only one brave enough to use the words “the deep state” on camera.  

Memorable Dialogue: “I’m surprised they’ve let me continue to live,” Flynn says, dropping a “they” that remains unspecified.

Sex and Skin: None, but if there were, it’d be straight missionary for the purpose of procreation only.

Our Take: Again, don’t expect a single dissenting voice here. Flynn is full of people saying things like, “Obama and Biden didn’t want Gen. Flynn giving them a proctology exam without any anesthesia!” Give the doc some credit for its slick production values and attempts to sidestep Flynn’s extreme ideologies – it doesn’t get into his religious beliefs, and ends the narrative before he becomes a QAnon endorser. Some reports say Flynn, once a registered Democrat, was always extreme in his views, and was emboldened to be more vocal by his experiences in the Obama and Trump administrations; you could therefore generously take Flynn as a making-of-an-extremist portrait, if you’re willing to wade through this genuflecting hagiography. 

Give this doc some credit – it’s not too far a stretch to assert that the U.S. government kowtows to special interests and needs an overhaul, a statement many level-headed Americans would agree with. But Flynn’s unwillingness to Go There, to get into Flynn’s Christianity-is-the-one-true-religion beliefs, or discuss his dealings in Turkey and Russia in any detail (“strictly business” is how Flynn very briefly brushes them away), or how he believes the baseless assertion that 2020 election was stolen from Trump. We get many vague inferences about how the country is in dire straits, another general bon mot many average citizens would deem true, but the talking heads here don’t get into exactly why – the more reasonable among us would point to gross partisanship stemming from systemic corruption, not, as implied here, a deep state cabal that would DARE target a True Patriot like Flynn. The less generous among us would consider this documentary a gateway to nutjob conspiracies, Flynn hoping you’ll get a whiff of the weed being smoked here before eventually evolving into someone who wake-and-bakes daily on deep-state QAnon lunacy. 

Our Call: Reading Wikipedia can be pretty dry, but it’s less boring and more objectively informative than Flynn. It also won’t take you 127 minutes to get through. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.