Rating  - How an east Texas congressman made Afghanistan safe for the Taliban
BEWARE SPOILERS!! (and pompous displays of semi-relevant erudition)
Director Mike Nichols is a past master of women's point of view films that go beyond the narrow confines of the "chick flick." Silkwood (1983); Heartburn (1986); Working Girl (1988); and the very fine Postcards from the Edge (1990) come to mind. His first feature was an adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor back in 1966. He followed the next year with the generation-defining The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. His films feature fine satire played along the cutting edge of the popular culture.
Here he deviates slightly to celebrate Texas congressman Charlie Wilson who managed to persuade Congress to support the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. In particular Wilson was able to get American shoulder-launched Stinger missiles for the locals to shoot down Soviet aircraft. In the film we see some nice graphics of just how effective those missiles were. It is no exaggeration to say that Charlie Wilson's intervention turned the tide against the Soviets and eventually persuaded them to withdraw. A few years later, as we all know, the Soviet Union came to its sputtering end.
Nichols's "celebration" of Congressman Wilson is however mitigated by the revelation that Good Time Charlie was no angel. Tom Hanks plays the alcoholic and cocaine snorting congressman with a genial--almost innocent--duplicity that only hints at the Machiavellian personality required to properly grace the hallowed halls of Congress. Hanks is just too sweet, a nice guy playing at being a practiced power broker. What is missing is the edge of obsession and single-minded egoism. Perhaps we needed John Malkovich with an east Texas twang.
Julia Roberts plays Wilson's long-time girlfriend whose interest in defeating the godless communists stems not from any sympathy for the out-gunned Afghans but from religious sensibilities of the sort usually associated with evangelical members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I found her white wig and high-toned manner a step in the wrong direction for Miss Roberts. I fear that the transition she is making from starlet to star to character actor is an embarrassment that she might want to avoid.
The real star of this film is Phillip Seymour Hoffman who plays the international operative and sometime American spy, Gust Avrakotos, a sneaky, blunt and very smart guy who also wants to defeat the Soviets. Hoffman brings to the part the kind of rough edge and frankly Machiavellian intent missing in Tom Hanks' character.
The film is marred slightly by a depiction of people in power and their environs that conforms to something like television's mass culture with lots of sleeping around and sharp-edged wise-cracking on the spot, and a somewhat simplistic story line. None of this is to be helped since a living must be made and producers must be assured that the mass audience will attend. Mike Nichols is used to this, and it is remarkable how many fine films he has made that simultaneously seduced not only the money men and the audience, but the critics as well.
The message of the film is contained in a Zen master story that goes like this (I am paraphrasing from the quotations page at the Internet Movie Database site):
There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday who gets a horse, and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful. The boy got a horse." And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "how terrible." And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight except the boy who can't because his legs are all messed up. And everybody in the village says, "How wonderful." And again the Zen master says, "we'll see."
This captures the spirit of our continuing military involvement in the Middle East. Today's results may look good or bad but can only be really defined by the unintended consequences to come. We armed the Afghans. Unfortunately their triumph against the Soviet Union led to the rise of the Taliban, and that to their harboring of Al Qaeda which led to 9/11, which led to... and so on. How Charlie Wilson's War ultimately ends may not be known for generations.
See this for Mike Nichols whose clear direction and sharp eye for satire is undiminished as he approaches his ninth decade of life. (He was 76 when this film came out.)
Rating  - Coherence Left on the Cutting Room Floor?
I'm giving this film three stars only because the people I watched it with were amused by it. Otherwise I'd go lower. It looked to me like a botched job, the sort of film where the script writer, the director, and the producers couldn't get on the same page and so released a compromised product that satisfied nobody. It's odd to read the other reviews here on ammy; many of them grind political axes, but the radical right-wingers accuse the film of being leftist propaganda, while the liberals accuse it of being rightist deception. I'd be happier if it were clearly anything besides shallow, exploitative, and uncontextualized. It is fairly silly to offer this as a historical film based on a true story, and yet omit so many players in that story. My own views of the film's political obtuseness are more or less the same as those expressed in the review by Timothy Scanlon.
Forgetting the issue of historical content, I have to say something about the film as drama. Tom Hanks is a great actor, but a dud in this role. He's too recognizable, of course, but beyond that, he's not plausible as Charlie Wilson, even the Charlie Wilson of the script. Take a look at the real Charlie Wilson, as shown in the bonus features; you'll see what I mean. The only outstanding acting in this film, as many others have stated, is done by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of the 'rogue' intelligence agent.
If you have any broader base of information about events in Afghanistan in the decades from Carter to Bush, you may find this film painful. It's a bitter fact that the USA has stepped into the jackboots left on the field by the Russians in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The maxim is "know your enemy," not "become them."
Rating - The best character was not Tom Hanks nor Julia Roberts
Charlie Wilson's war is an enjoyable vehicle for making the point that someone can have a very flawed personal life, but still help humanity. I could tell Tom Hanks had a lot of fun playing the hard drinking, womanizing, Charlie Wilson. However, he didn't seem entirely comfortable in the role, which would have been more convincingly played by Michael Douglas or Jack Nicholson (although granted Nicholson's a bit too old for the role)--someone who is better at playing a womanizing jerk. And the camera man had a lot of fun with those gratuitous butt and cleavage shots. As far as the Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts characters are concerned, most of their best lines were in the trailer. The unsung hero of this movie is Phillip Seymour Hoffman (nominated for best supporting actor) playing a gruff, sarcastic, highly intelligent CIA agent. His character is hilarious, and IMO what really makes this movie.
Rating  - worth it
Tom Hanks is the star of the film, and his acting abilities continue to amaze me. He can apparently do it all. The story is pretty good, though keep in mind there's more talking than action, but that's the way it is in the life of a congressman. The movie feels longer than it really is. The women who were working with Tom Hanks are VERY hot! Great movie
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