The myth of America is a condition assiduously cultivated in political movies – so says Michael Coyne in his new book, Hollywood Goes to Washington. Along with prevailing value systems, the anticipation of political events, and the saccharine-loaded sentiment of presidential symbolism, political films do rather a lot to align our sense of the way the American system both works and regards itself, he suggests. It is an important point and one that goes a long way to endorsing what a good book this is about politics at the movies. While Coyne's work is brief, the list of films covered is long and each page packs a great deal into its analysis of many classic, and not a few forgotten pictures. The discrete argument that the political movie is a genre “by virtue of content rather than form” is another important if slightly contentious area of investigation. For as Coyne is at pains to point out himself, using examples like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Bob Roberts, films use symbols as ideological staging posts – as guides to the rigours of an American value system – moulded by the torchbearers of a heroic and enduring past. The form therefore is the recognition of the great and the good who crop up in, or are referenced by, such films repeatedly; an inveterate, generational rebirth every so often of the values that have informed the past. More often than not this is signified, as the two films above demonstrate, by the presence of a Thomas Jefferson or an Abraham Lincoln.

Nevertheless, through the prism of Arthur Schlesinger's historical contemplation of America, Coyne conceives of the six “paradoxes” of the nation as being a decent guide to the narratives, characters and resolutions of political movies. They are in effect about Americanism, he says, and a further astute recognition takes place in sensing that the first decade of the twenty-first century has seen Hollywood offer us something more critical in its evaluation of the political culture – something intrinsic and pertinent, if not wholly original, in its rejection of the Bush years and clamour for optimism in the coming Obama era. All this Coyne relates with interesting evidence and no little conviction. As the useful filmography also demonstrates and as stated above, there are few films neglected here, even if a number of fairly important ones are mentioned only briefly. No matter, just the sense of a typology of political moviemaking is an important statement of intent for the book and a key rejoinder to the few works that have appeared on the subject so far.

The book is not trying to be definitive, but it does nevertheless neglect a few areas that require further analysis. The relation of the films to ideology, and to the wider American polity itself, is well done for the most part; the relation of the films to Hollywood, however, and to the political culture within that tangled community is less considered. Somewhat neglected also are the aims, agendas and work of a number of (recurring) filmmakers who have been at the forefront of political moviemaking in Hollywood's history. And much as Coyne suggests that the political film is alive and well in the early twenty-first century, he does not substantiate the evidence as to how and why so many movies of different kinds (documentary, drama-docs, foreign-policy agitprops, as well as TV series and the return of the political miniseries) have re-emerged at this time. Maybe the answer seems obvious: it's clearly Bush, isn't it? But the amount and divergence of the movies/TV series suggest that while Bush may have been a catalyst to some, it is not the only answer to hand. Finally, the author seems very intent on making his own personal judgement quite apparent in the text, and nothing wrong with that, but it is not entirely clear as to why intriguing – though admittedly not great – films like Deterrence or Bulworth are lambasted, while the likes of Nashville and the comparatively obscure Robert Aldrich movie Twilight's Last Gleaming are so lauded. The observations suggest something profound about Hollywood approaches to politics but it is never revealed what that might be.

All in all, however, Hollywood Goes to Washington does a fine job of evaluating some current debates in the field, and articulating a greater theoretical model for scholars to employ in their own analyses. You might not share all the judgements on offer, but this book is provocative, enticing and obdurate, and much the better for that.