Path to War is a 2002 American biographical television film, produced by HBO and directed by John Frankenheimer.

The film deals directly with the Vietnam War as seen through the eyes of United States President Lyndon B. Johnson and his cabinet members.

The starting events portrayed begin in January 1965 with LBJ at the Inaugural Ball and ends on March 31, 1968, when he announces to the nation that he will not run for re-election.

At the start of the movie, President Johnson (Michael Gambon) is focusing on his "Great Society" which is a series of new laws and programs addressing social issues in the United States.

In a cabinet meeting, he is pressured by General Earle Wheeler (Frederic Forrest) into sending combat troops into South Vietnam as attacks against the American advisors there has been increasing.

There is general consensus in the room except for George Ball (Bruce McGill) who argues that the North Vietnamese will only continue to escalate the attacks.

Johnson is still trying to focus on his "Great Society" including meeting with George Wallace (Gary Sinise) on the problems with African American voter registration, and with Martin Luther King Jr. (Curtis McClarin).

King does not grant Johnson's request to pause his work in the civil-rights movement, saying civil rights shouldn't have to wait for any change in Vietnam.

Johnson asks Clark Clifford (Donald Sutherland) to attend a meeting as he had been an advisor to President Kennedy.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Alec Baldwin) is extremely confident that the additional pressure will force the North Vietnamese to negotiate a peace.

McNamara testifies before Congress that the bombing expansion will include targets smaller than his corner gas station and implies he is against it.

Television critic Matt Zoller Seitz in his 2016 book co-written with Alan Sepinwall titled TV (The Book) named Path to War as the 6th greatest American TV-movie of all time, writing: "This nearly three-hour epic plays like the greatest political drama that Oliver Stone never made....

[2] According to The Washington Post: "Gambon is entirely up to the task of making a larger-than-life icon seem painfully -- and in the end, helplessly -- human.