Based on actual events, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR tells the unlikely story of one even more unlikely man on a mission to make the world a better place. It’s a smart film, slickly done, with a disarming insouciance that belies the devastating political story it tells. Aaron Sorkin has taken the facts and with Mike Nichols directing, has made it into a slick, smart, and subversive look at where America went wrong with its geo-political thinking.
The place is Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. The troops are committing crime against civilians and the world at large doesn’t seem to be taking much notice until two things happen. In 1980, Dan Rather does a report from there on “60 Minutes” and Charlie of the title, a Texas Congressman, happens to catch it while sitting in a hot tub in Las Vegas with a collection of naked women, cocaine, and a would-be television producer. His is one of more undemanding districts in Texas, all his constituents really want is their taxes kept low, which leaves him with plenty of free time for partying and doing favors for his fellow Representatives. Coupled with his position on several key subcommittees, this further leaves him in the perfect position to actually do something about the freeing the Afghan people, which proves to be more complicated that just throwing money at it. Charlie finds himself persuading the Egyptians, Pakistanis, and the Israelis to cooperate in funneling arms to the Afghan resistance, and dissuading Joanne, the Houston socialite (Julia Roberts) with surprisingly good international contacts, from trying to turn things into a religious war. That his indictment (by none other than Rudy Gulianni) on cocaine charges actually gives him cover for his money-raising agenda for Afghanistan is the sort of irony that can only come from fact, not fiction, and kismet is the only explanation for Charlie being the kind of guy who could make that work to his advantage.
Casting Hanks, the quintessential everyman good guy of his generation, as the party animal is a stroke of genius. He has the right twinkle in his eye while appreciating the pulchritude with which he has populated his office, knocking back the single-malt scotch that CIA malcontent Gust (Philip Seymour Hoffman) brings him as a token of appreciation for the extra funding, and casually loosening the tie on his tux after Joanne escorts him into her boudoir. It’s his lock on externalizing a rock-rib sense of basic decency, though, that is key. That cherub face, with more than a few miles on it, still delivers the right blend of disbelief and moral indignation in the presence of children mutilated by land mines, and government functionaries who don’t have a clue. There’s also the good-old-boy drawl cordially telling off a constituent with a shaky grasp of the meaning of secular, keeping things civil during his multiple faux pas when meeting Pakistan’s president, General Zia (Om Puri), and keeping things from falling apart during a squabble between a Mossad agent and the Egyptian deputy defense minister while a belly dancer, whom Charlie has imported to Egypt from Texas, sets the mood for negotiations.
Hoffman matches him in every particular by playing his polar opposite. As Gust, the disgruntled CIA man mentoring Charlie through covert ops in the real world, he makes dyspepsia sort of charming, and scathingly brilliant smarts engaging rather than alienating.
Roberts wears couture with conviction, but fights a touch-and-go battle against being overpowered by the enormous blond do that recreates the worst of the 80s and the excesses to be found in southern coiffure, plus the equally assertive 80s eye-makeup. She does a credible if unremarkable turn as a steel magnolia and the seventh-richest woman in Texas who opens doors for Charlie, but is undercut by sneering along with an uncertain Texas accent.
Sorkin’s script makes its larger points without becoming pedantic. Having Gust explain during his tirade against his boss why the CIA tossed out most of its agents who happened to be second-generation Americans is a treat. CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR is a feel-good film as Charlie nimbly finesses freedom for an entire country, but it also bears uneasy witness to the minds in charge of the world, and to missed opportunities for continued peace in Afghanistan with a pitiless dissection of both designed to brew up a little of that righteous indignation in the audience. Mission accomplished.
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