Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/6/08
One
of the problems with America's political decision-making process is that
it has very little understanding of cause and effect. We love to
make grand gestures, to carpet-bomb problems with money, troops, or both,
but we also love to declare things “solved” and “over” in a way that the
complex, one-thing-leads-to-another nature of life doesn't much allow for.
Charlie Wilson's War, the fun new comic drama from director Mike
Nichols and writer Aaron Sorkin, tells a nice, inspiring story of one such
American victory, our covert intervention into the 1980's war between Afghanistan
and the Soviet Union. It's also smart enough to keep slyly needling
us about the ways little things like Karl Marx's publication of The
Communist Manifesto and local politician Charles Hazard killing young
Charlie Wilson's dog helped lead to our eventually taking the Soviets'
place there.
Charlie
Wilson (Tom Hanks) is in Congress for three reasons: booze, women
and he hates Communists. While enjoying a night with the first two,
he happens to see a TV report with Dan Rather in Afghanistan underscoring
the Mujahideen's need for advanced weaponry to repel the invading Soviets
who'd created a massive refugee crisis. Wilson's response is to use
his power on the Congressional Appropriations Committee to double the budget
for
CIA operations there to a piddling ten million dollars. But that's
enough to get him noticed by people invested in the fight, like Dallas
Socialite and religious conservative Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts).
Joanne mixes feminine wiles and persuasive diplomacy to invest her new
friend more and more deeply in the cause until he finally meets the man
who can tell him exactly what he needs to do to mount a winning covert
war: Gust Avrakotos, one of the three guys in a room in charge of
coming up with our war strategy. Charlie just starts moving pieces
around the budget chess board, flooding more and more money into a complicated
web of International partners to put Soviet-made weapons in Afghan hands
(US weapons would have turned the Cold War hot in a New York Minute).
The tide of war turns, but... is there something we're forgetting?
Oh,
yeah, that the power vacuum created by our hasty loss of interest in Afghanistan
after the Soviets left would allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to get their
footholds in the country we're still at War trying to shake them loose
from. The film never directly spells this fact out, it credits us
(perhaps inaccurately) for being smart enough to already know it.
But it's always looming in the background, with smug American Christians
like Joanne seemingly oblivious to the notion that framing the conflict
in our religious terms is an invitation for others to frame it in their
own, and Gust's constant prodding of Charlie to keep in mind what we're
going to do after the Soviets leave. Alas, as we watch, we already
know what America is going to do...
But
don't let any of this policy talk make you think Charlie Wilson's War
is another Rendition: no, there's more
than enough sugar to help this medicine go down, starting with Charlie
Wilson, tailor-made for the comic and dramatic skills Tom Hanks so rarely
gets to combine in a single role. I honestly prefer this kind of
old-school hard-living politician to the freeze-dried piety of their contemporaries,
and it's interesting to see how his Afghan adventure doesn't change who
Charlie is at all: he's just found time to mix a little history-making
into his schedule of doing coke with Playboy models (never inside US borders,
mind you...). Hanks is charming, funny and smart in just the right
way, and I really bought him as a member of the US Government. I
also loved his staff, dubbed “Charlie's Angels” because he hired for looks
and then counted on his employees to pick up Washington Staff skills as
they went. Amy Adams, delightful as always as his assistant Bonnie,
leads them as a competent woman who happens to be beautiful, but the qualifications
are definitely reversed for the rest of the team, played with a wonderful
sorority girl pluck by Shiri Appleby, Wynn Everett, Mary Bonner Baker and
Palace favorite Rachel Nichols. Watching them do their level best
to wriggle Charlie out of an ethics crisis while the firestorm of war swirls
around them is a hoot.
It's
been three years since Julia Roberts' last on-screen appearance and Joanna
is a great comeback role for her, particularly because it allows her to
shine in a supporting role in ways she hasn't always been able to do.
Blinded by her own dazzling self-confidence, the character also shows peerless
diplomatic skills, particularly in her knowledge that what really moves
a politician is to have their ego stroked in just the right places.
Roberts' mixture of charm and icy determination is perfectly pitched.
It's increasingly clear that there's no character Philip Seymour Hoffman
can't climb into the skin of, so it's no surprise that he shines as the
tact-challenged but wise CIA analyst. A rogue's gallery of other
conspirators round out the cast nicely, led by Ned Beatty (right back in
the Senate after apparently learning nothing from his fate in Shooter)
and Om Puri, amusingly droll as Pakistani President Zia, who we're assured
“did not kill Bhutto. There was a trial.”
Aaron
Sorkin's script crackles with the kind of whip-smart dialog we expect from
him without getting bogged down in the Beltway Smugness we also expect
from him (one exception: the movie keeps hitting Rudolph Giuliani's
name in a way that's less than conversational). Mike Nichols directs
with smooth confidence, even in cut-aways to the front that are often wisely
filmed from a First Person Shooter perspective to emphasize how overmatched
the rebels are. My only quibble with his fine work and the great
art direction that smoothly takes us from the deserts of Afghanistan to
the corridors of Washington power is that about seven years pass without
seeming to: nothing from the characters' apparent age to the Angels'
hairstyles ever changes.
Charlie
Wilson's War is a breezy, fun history lesson (as is often the case,
charactes are “improved”, but the narrative is surprisingly close to the
public record) which, at just 97 minutes, errs on the side of being a bit
too short to fully flesh things out. But it's also a first-rate star
vehicle, and surely the most fun you'll have this year being reminded how
totally we “f**cked up” the situation in the Middle East. |
