107m
Director: Glenn Jordan
Broadcast Date: March 23, 1993
Network: HBO
Cast: James Garner, Jonathan Pryce
Synopsis (New York Times): Based on the exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, best seller by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar, “Barbarians at the Gate” chronicles the multi-billion-dollar battle in 1988 for RJR Nabisco, which at the time was working feverishly on developing a “smokeless cigarette.” The machinations were incredibly complex, requiring bankers galore and backfield lawyers for the lawyers on the front lines. Condensing the story into a movie running less than two hours, Larry Gelbart, the creator of television’s “M*A*S*H,” has eliminated the players in the middle layers to focus almost entirely on the top-level principals, most notably F. Ross Johnson, chairman of RJR Nabisco, and Henry Kravis, the master of leveraged buyouts at the Wall Street concern Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company.
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