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Review: “Charlie Wilson’s War”
By kyle | December 8, 2007
AFGHANISHTAR!
Kyle Smith review of “Charlie Wilson’s War”
97 minutes/R (profanity, nudity, sexual content, drug use)
I somewhat enjoyed “Charlie Wilson’s War,” but I’m glad I don’t have any money invested in it. It would be exaggerating only slightly to call it The Congressional Record meets Ishtar.
How strange is this film? So strange that there aren’t any stakes to speak of for the main character. So strange that pages and pages of dialogue float by trying to convince you to care whether the 1981 covert ops budget for aid to the Afghanistan mujahadeen fighting the invading Soviets was $10 million or $40 million, or how many T-55 tanks the Soviet invaders used, or what was the name of the weapon then considered most useful for shooting down attack helicopters. So strange that Democrats are shown killing Commies. Not calling for sanctions against them; not filing motions against them in the U.N.; not calling for investigations of how their prisoners of war were being treated: just getting them in the crosshairs, and pow.
Tom Hanks, doing a low Elvis drawl, plays the real-life Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson, who at first appears to be the usual Hollywood parody of conservative Southern lawmakers. He’s a degenerate who swills Scotch and snorts coke (though not onscreen; this is the actor, or rather the brand, Tom Hanks we’re talking about). He consorts with strippers in hot tubs and staffs his Washington office with heaving cleavage he refers to as “jailbait.” But screenwriter Aaron Sorkin plants an early scene in which Wilson refuses to help a constituent keep a creche on municipal property, which clues us in: Wilson is secular, which in a Hollywood political film means heroic, so his Bubba-ness–“You can teach ‘em how to type, but you can’t teach ‘em how to grow tits,” is one of his aphorisms– is meant to be charming and quirky, not a sign of a diseased soul as you’d expect.
A lot of Sorkin’s lines are funny: “I’m on the other side of that issue,” says Charlie. “Ethics?” is the response. Yet the movie generates only scattered laughs. Hanks’ mumbling–a habit picked up by Philip Seymour Hoffman as a slovenly and savvy CIA man transferred to the Afghanistan desk as the Soviets are invading in 1980–takes much of the fun out of the smarter parts of the script. Moreover, a lot of Sorkin’s gags don’t come from character or situation. “ Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?” “Tradition, mostly.” Funny, but it belongs in Jay Leno’s monologue.
For all of his one-liners, Charlie truly cares both about dealing a blow to the Soviets and about the suffering of the Afghans under Soviet domination; he even flies over to a refugee camp in Pakistan to meet children with their limbs blown off by mines disguised to look like toys. The Soviets, it turns out, figure that wounding a child beats killing one: the wounded require more care, and they remove their relatives from battle.
So he cooks up a scheme to help the Mujahadeen, and in some of the movie’s best scenes Sorkin’s trademark rapid-fire dialogue explains how: Wilson can’t just send American weapons to the Afghans. He needs weapons that could plausibly have been captured from the Soviets. Israel has just such a cache of confiscated weapons, but that would mean putting Israel and the Muslim countries on the same side of the covert war. Meanwhile, Charlie is getting financial support from “the 6th-richest woman in Texas” (Julia Roberts), a fund-raiser and party-thrower who hates Commies and loves Jesus in equal measure.
What’s lively and fresh about the film is that it feels truer than most Washington movies, which tend to portray politicians as either scoundrels and laughingstocks or portentous policy-makers with noble brows and steely eyes. Director Mike Nichols, who made “Primary Colors,” presents a D.C. where smart and well-meaning people, some of them slobs in cheap suits, do the best they can considering all the competing forces they deal with.
But the film is dramatically aimless, because the Afghans, the people who actually have something at stake in the war, are in the background of the movie; Wilson’s supply of Scotch and chicks doesn’t depend on whether he wins his covert war. Hanks and Roberts have an affair that neither takes more seriously than a handshake, and as they and their jokes hop from Cairo to Houston to Islamabad, the movie at times seems like many another tiresome international caper that mistook frequent-flier mileage for a storyline.
For every sharp one-liner Sorkin offers, there’s a paragraph of detail-clogged pedantry. Sorkin’s fascination with the political process seems even more bottomless than it did when he was running “The West Wing.” Do you care how long the flying time is from Afghanistan, or where you change planes? Do you need to know the acronyms for every weapon system in use in the 80s? Sorkin seems to think that every time he mentions a name from the early 80s that’s still in the news–Dan Rather, Brian Ross, John Murtha, “Rudolph” Giuliani–he’ll get a laugh of recognition. These are “Face the Nation”-style allusions that will deliver a “Face the Nation-sized audience.
The movie would not have been made were it not for the moral, which is mainly saved for the last five minutes: American adventures overseas can have unpredictable effects. Sorkin gets this point across nicely, with a tale about a zen master and a kid with a horse, but being clever and being right are two different things. Sorkin all but says that a few million bucks for schools in Afghanistan after the war in the 1990s would have prevented 9/11; yet the U.S. for decades has done everything for Saudi Arabia but send it flowers on Mother’s Day. None of our efforts prevented that rancid kingdom from nursing most of the 9/11 hijackers.
Topics: Books, Movies, Politics |
December 8th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Kyle you’re missing the most important thing. Hanks is supposedly the biggest male box office draw. Roberts is the biggest female one. So this movie should be on track to make 400 million dollars. Think The Davinci Code plus Pretty Women.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Kyle - Maybe I’ve read this erroneously, but were you insinuating that Hanks is a morally ambiguous, drug-snorting, bourbon banging socialite in real life?
From what I’ve seen of him in interviews (not that they are indicative of a man’s life) he seems a rather upstanding and temperate person, far and away superior to his Hollywood counterparts.
Anyway, the beginning of your third paragraph confused me. Nice review with good political direction.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:34 am
It doesnt matter that this movie features Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts . . . it will soon join the heap of recent anti-war movie bombs like “Rendition,” “Lions for Lambs” and “Grace is Gone.”
That said, movie audiences–especially younger ones–won’t care about a movie based on a covert 80s war. Most Americans don’t even realize that many of the people who were part of the similar Iran Contra scandal under Reagan ended up in influential positions directing similar covert activities in our current administration.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Is this a Lib wet dream? Reagan didn’t win the Cold War, it was some morally challenged Clintonesque Democrat? And after all was said and done and the noney spent, it backfired anyway. It’s a wonder defeating the Soviets wasn’t looked upon as Shakespearean tragedy. Hollywood can’t resist ’sending a message’ and why more heavy handed message films have ALL failed miserably this year. Not to mention, films that ridicule or criticise Christians. Radical Islam is responsible for ALL the barbaric terrorism going on everywhere, but watch out for those Christians, they might want to save your unborn. Films like LICENSE TO WED, EVAN ALMIGHTY, and THE GOLDEN COMPASS have flopped. The last two of which may rank unofficially 1 and 2 the most expensive box office flops of all time. If there’s a message audiences have sent Hollywood this year it’s that we don’t want to ashamadly pull out of Iraq/Afghanistan, but win there, and that this is still a Christian country. How many hundreds of millions will studios lose before they finally get a clue? I have no sympathies for them. With an election year in ‘08, we are guaranteed the Leftist, Lib loving, anti-American propaganda has only begun.
PS Does anyone else feel nails on a blackboard when Roberts says, “Chollie…”? Just wondering.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:03 am
You say “So strange that Democrats are shown killing Commies–not calling for sanctions against them or filing motions in the U.N.” As a journalist you should remember that Democratic presidents got is into both the Korean War and the Vietnam War (in which a lot of “Commies” were killed). Democrats also presided during World War I and II. I’m a Democrat and I’m no war monger, but this delusion that the party is somehow ultra-pacifist just doesn’t coincide with history at all.
December 13th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I’m not talking about some ancient political party like the Whigs. You seriously think the Dems today are at all similar to the “bear any burden, pay any price” era of J.F. Kennedy?
December 13th, 2007 at 11:40 am
This is pretty clearly a politically motivated review. I suppose I can’t expect you to divorce your politics from your movie reviews, but I’ve disagreed with your reviews before and I will surely do it again.
From your actual review, I might have thought you somewhat enjoyed the film - were it not for the tacked on political disagreement you added at the end.
Frankly (and this is not a political judgement) I find you to be a poor reviewer.
December 13th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
“Radical Islam is responsible for ALL the barbaric terrorism going on everywhere”
Except for the Irish (IRA - although, admittedly now they’re Irish American funding has been withdrawn post 9/11 they’ve had too come on board with the peace process), ETA (Spainish Basque Seperatists), Tamil Tigers (Sri Lankan seperatists), The Aum Cult (Japanese - carried out Nerve Gas attacks on public transport systems in the 90’s), Army Of God (An American Christian anti abortion group who carried out several bombings in atlanta in 1996).
The list goes on - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_organizations
The argument that terrorism extends from Islam is tenuous at best. I would argue it stems from anyone with the right (wrong…) type of personality and extreme beliefs.
Cheers for the film review - sounds like something I’d enjoy.
December 14th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Stuart, you obviously know nothing about the Koran, the Hadith, Islamic culture and the absence of any sort of Islamic enlightenment. Your formula of “personality + extremism” can only come from a place of ignorance. Usually, this strain of ignorance comes from naive Leftists who also claim that Christianity is as much a threat to the West as Islam. Read some history and you might learn that other criteria are just as important (e.g., culture, dogma).