Charlie Wilson's War
Pretty Woman II: Dirty DebutantesEarly in Charlie Wilson's War, a speaker intones that without Charlie Wilson, history "would be largely and sadly different." Whether history
By Jason BlairPretty Woman II: Dirty DebutantesEarly in Charlie Wilson's War, a speaker intones that without Charlie Wilson, history "would be largely and sadly different." Whether history would be largely different without Wilson - a U.S. Congressman from Texas for 25 years - is debatable but probably accurate, but the reference to sadness caught my attention. Wilson, a buoyant rascal, elevated revelry to an art form, so whether history would have been gloomier without him is beyond a shadow of a doubt. What makes the story of Charlie Wilson's War so irresistible is how a scoundrel and hard-drinking womanizer like Wilson (Tom Hanks) stumbles into the crossroads of history and, once there, has the good sense to stand his ground. What makes Charlie Wilson's War one of the year's best films is how artfully the screenplay plays Wilson's weaknesses into strengths.
If you enjoyed The West Wing, the walking-and-talking political drama about a fictional liberal administration, you'll be right at home with Charlie Wilson's War. They share the same writer, Aaron Sorkin (who also created Sports Night), and more importantly, they share Sorkin's intellectual curiosity and gift for verbal dynamite. Sorkin has always had high ideals, but he's been easy to dismiss as high-minded and tweedy because those ideals are often pouring out of the mouths of refined elites. Not in Charlie Wilson's War. Sorkin has found the perfect foil not only in Wilson, a coarse philanderer, but in Gus Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Wilson's brilliant but irritable contact at the CIA for whom the term coarse is a gross understatement. Wilson is a man for whom business tends to interfere with pleasure, if not multiple pleasures; Avrakotos knows no pleasure we can see, save one: blowing the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Completing the trio is Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), the Houston socialite and former beauty queen who inspires Wilson to look into Afghanistan. (Actually, the trio is a quartet if Wilson's sweet, moral assistant, Bonnie Bach, is included. Amy Adams is sensational in this small but sturdy role.) According to Herring, the place to see Afghanistan is Pakistan, where Wilson encounters 3 million Afghan refugees. Those who haven't died wait to be martyred. Wilson discovers that Afghan rebels are using rifles and mortars against the Russians - essentially, sticks and rocks - while the Russians are sailing overhead in state of the art, rocket-equipped helicopters. What the rebels need are heat-seeking Stinger missiles; Wilson serves on the subcommittee that can make those missiles a reality. Only politics - personal, national and global - stands in Wilson's way.
Charlie Wilson's War is a lightly drawn, ideas-driven satire of an almost unbelievable episode in American politics. It isn't deep, nor is it what I would call a closely observed film. The film is talky and a little humid at the outset, but as each person enlisted by Avrakotos seems progressively more clever, so does the film become more enjoyable with each passing sequence. The performances are among the best this year, particularly by Hanks and Hoffman, whose easy but alert rapport should earn them many nominations. The tone of Charlie Wilson's War is sometimes inconsistent, but the message surely is not: Afghanistan was pried from the Soviets' grip by the aid of a most unlikely hero only to fall under Taliban control when we neglected to win the peace. It remains a victory that was profoundly incomplete.
This review orginally appeared in the Eugene Weekly.
★★★★
Directed by Mike Nichols. Starring Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams Rated R.
Latest in Film
-
Bad Habits
Prepare to be here-tickled
- Jul 19, 2017
-
Gorilla Warfare
A True Summer Blockbuster
- Jul 19, 2017
-
The Good Daughter
Riding through Southeast Asia
- Jul 12, 2017
- More »
More by Jason Blair
-
The Great Escape: Quiet baseball drama is a champ
It's actually a baseball movie...Sugar, the new film by the directors of Half Nelson, begins and ends with our hero atop a pitcher's mound. Tucked in between is a minor league season, one that elapses with all the boredom and fury you'd expect from a modern baseball drama. But baseball is a side attraction in Sugar, as mature and empathetic as any sports flick in recent memory. In the era of Eastbound and Down - HBO's terrific spoof of a clueless ex-pro baseballer - we can expect a glut of baseball satire, given what the game has done to itself. Meanwhile, Sugar has other scores to settle. It's about how easily undone are the dreams of being among the best at something, and how in order to be the best, it can be necessary to leave those we love behind. Sugar works as an immigrant saga, a coming-of-age story and a coming-down-to-earth cautionary tale. In short, Sugar is pure and honest, which is more than we can say for baseball itself.
- Jun 3, 2009
-
The Late Ones: Two siblings care for the father who never did
Nothing like a good ol' fashioned awkward moment...The Savages, the title of which refers to the characters' names as well as their predicament, is not, as luck would have it, another bleak film about people behaving badly. It can't avoid being a grim picture in places, what with its subject matter - the death of a parent by dementia - likely to provoke nearly universal feelings of dread. But writer/director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) presents The Savages as a tale of survival, one in which Wendy (Laura Linney) and her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) reshuffle their lives when the father who abandoned them can no longer care for himself. It's a savage undertaking, to be sure, but Jenkins isn't interested in death as much as how death reorganizes the lives it doesn't take.
- Jan 23, 2008
-
Claws Out: Nothing Hurts You Like Family
Among the best films of 2005 was The Squid and the Whale, a dark drama that happens to be wickedly funny. If it leans a
- Jan 2, 2008
- More »
Readers also liked…
-
Irreverent Commentary Makes Bad Movies Hilarious
MST3K is back without missing a beat
- Jul 6, 2016
-
A Grumpy Old Man Experiences a Star War
Or: How I got mad and wanted my damn money back
- Dec 23, 2015
