I don’t review nearly enough movies.
Or, at least that’s what my statistics keep hissing into my ear while it’s pressing a broken bottle under my chin, rambling madly that my technorati ranking is due to drop five points the next week if I don’t “shape the f*ck up”. Whenever I happen to find myself in this bizarre predicament I always do the same thing: I vow my holiest promise on my finest copy of ‘Lord of the Rings’ to always blog about the movies I feel deserves a mention or two.
Like this one right here, which I watched solely because Aaron Sorkin had written the script.
And also because I happen to find Tom Hanks a pretty good actor.
This is a historical movie, so don’t worry about me unleashing any Major Spoilers on your unsuspecting mind. I’m pretty sure that all my readers here are vaguely aware that the Soviet Union is no more, and that their war on Afghanistan was one of the biggest contributors to ensure its eventual downfall. This movie is about how a US senator named Charlie Wilson one day took an interest in the slaughtering of Afghans and decided to help the poor people out by sending them guns & ammunition.
None of this is anything remotely spoilerish, since this movie actually begins with an award ceremony where Charlie Wilson receives an honorary medal for his efforts. So what’s there to like about this movie if the plot is a given?
Well, I’ll allow that it does take some of the excitement out of the movie, but I don’t actually give a two tugs of a dead dog’s cock (sorry, I’ve been dying to use that expression ever since I read it in a Warren Ellis comic) about all that. What I do however care about is all the things that made this film very good. Which is quite few things indeed.
Sorkin handles politics like none other, and he even manages to make it entertaining in all its crooked, illogical glory. This film captures its era perfectly in that sense and depicts the world wide situation in a way that’s both complex but also easy to follow. My biggest issue with this film is probably that I didn’t think it succeeded properly in showing us that the US isn’t God’s Greatest Nation and that it’s made some Big Mistakes. Sure, it wraps up the whole thing with a quote about how the US *should* have done a better job in helping the Afghans after the war, but I got left with a feeling that the movie had just spent two hours implying that the US is so goddamned powerful that a senator and a five guys from the CIA is enough to bring down the biggest nation on the face of the Earth, and that’s when they’re not even trying properly. It’s actually a heroic tale about how one man’s efforts can change the world, but it didn’t quite feel like that to me.
That being said though, there isn’t much else to critique. The dialogue is as you’d expect nothing short of fantastic, though maybe not quite as rapid and machine gun-like as ‘Studio 60′ or ‘West Wing’. The movie never ceases to entertain; I was hooked from start to finish, and it didn’t even have that middle-slump that so many movies seem to suffer from. Tom Hanks does a nice job as ‘Charlie Wilson’, and Philip Seymour Hoffman does a ridiculously good job as Wilson’s CIA contact (I think he even got a well-deserved Oscar nod for this role). This is the first film I’ve seen Julia Roberts star since… Hell, I can’t even remember the last I saw her. I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the years had finally done her in and that the epic amounts of make-up applied was nothing but a last revival attempt before she has to switch roles from ‘pretty love interest’ till ‘that old looking woman’. At one point I kinda wanted to touch her face just to see if her skin cracked when you applied pressure.
Wrapping this baby up, I have to say that I thought this was a very good movie that I’m wholeheartedly recommending to anyone. Fellow Sorkin fans should find a lot here to get excited about, and normal, unfannish people should walk away the richer too. So do yourself a favour and watch ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’. It’s not something you’ll regret.
8.0/10
Posts
Sounds good. I’d forgotten about this movie, maybe I’ll check it out now. Thanks.
19. April 2008 @ 11:40 ( Permalink )
Watched when it first came out a few months ago, but thanks to my seemingly inherent suckyness, I never got around to reviewing it.
I agree, though, mostly. Brilliant movie, which masterfully combines the comic with the tragic and everything in-between. I thought it conveyed the US-bashing point nicely and in a not-too-hysterical manner, so that it might even make an attempt at preaching the gospel to people not exactly choir-inclined.
I’d give it a 9er, but as you know, I’m a kind and generous man.
20. April 2008 @ 16:16 ( Permalink )
“I thought it conveyed the US-bashing point nicely and in a not-too-hysterical manner, so that it might even make an attempt at preaching the gospel to people not exactly choir-inclined.”
I think it pussyfooted around the whole thing. People who are, err… pro-America?… would probably see this as a one big hailing of their own greatness with *maybe* a bitter aftertaste if they didn’t just zone it out. People who are sceptical to what they’ve been doing over there would, I suspect, like this film too because it DOES point some waggling fingers at grey areas, but not in such an extent that anyone gets offended by it.
This was no doubt a great strategy if you wanted to catch a wider audience (which they obviously wanted to), but I wish it could’ve had the balls to take a real stand. Either way, it would’ve made for a more interesting movie.
21. April 2008 @ 08:25 ( Permalink )
Taking a stand? Why? I thought the movie was about politics. Politics aren’t about taking stands, politics are about exploring the grey areas while looking as though you’re taking a stand.
And since the movie is *about* politics, wouldn’t it cheapen the entire display if the creator of the movie inserted it with his personal opinions on things all over the place?
21. April 2008 @ 08:40 ( Permalink )
Seriously, the movie got everything just about right. The very few Americans who cared did a splendid job in helping the Mujahedin kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan, seriously one of the few decent things that wwas done by either part during the whole damn Cold War. Then, when the enemy was smoten and the geopolitical threat to Pakistan (and everything that entails — and not to mention the threat against Iran) averted, the short-sighted, narrow-minded national chauvinists won, and the realist, idealist heroes got screwed, along with the population of Afghanistan.
Pretty accurate, if you ask me, although it might be that the movie was a bit flaccid on the whole geopolitical thing; I can’t quite remember, but I think it could have been more explicit in pointing out the reason why helping the Afghan people only was an issue while American security interests were at stake and could be augmented through this help.
21. April 2008 @ 15:58 ( Permalink )
Also, the movie took a stand. A subtle stand, luckily, so it’s not what some might label propaganda, but it’s not hard to see how the movie-makers feel about this conflict.
(Just the fact that they chose to make a movie about this tells a hell of a lot, really.)
21. April 2008 @ 16:00 ( Permalink )
Sheesh… If you read the review, you’ll see that you’ve both pretty much summed up what I thought about the politic-department of this story, except that I would’ve liked a bit more meat on the whole ‘where we fucked it up’ part. If it had done that, it would’ve been clearer (note that I always thought it *clear* what they were trying to telli us) to someone who’re not looking through our own, perhaps more perceptive goggles.
22. April 2008 @ 09:50 ( Permalink )
Hm, I think I see. You thought it’s message was clear, but you wanted it to be roaringly clear?
22. April 2008 @ 11:53 ( Permalink )
Clearer.
There’s a difference, you see.
22. April 2008 @ 12:53 ( Permalink )
XD So it WAS roaringly clear? Holy crap, man, what are you, some form of propaganda-enthusiast?
22. April 2008 @ 13:28 ( Permalink )
It’s pretty clear to people who watch it from “our” point of view. For other people who’re differently inclined, well, they wouldn’t walk out with the same experience, which I think is sad because those are exactly the people who NEEDS to hear this.
22. April 2008 @ 14:02 ( Permalink )
Needs from your perspective. From theirs? Not so much.
22. April 2008 @ 14:16 ( Permalink )
Isn’t it my perspective I’m presenting here, then?
If it isn’t, then somebody please tell who I’ve been impersonating for all this time.
22. April 2008 @ 14:24 ( Permalink )
How very rhetorical a point. What I meant was - and I believe you understood as much - to suggest that maybe a movie that gives its message and lets the viewer interpret it instead of bashing him or her over the head with it is a somewhat more dignified way of doing it.
22. April 2008 @ 15:01 ( Permalink )
I’ve never asked for any head-bashing, bludgeoning and/or flying morningstars. All I asked that it was a clearer; so, maybe a salad fork or its equivalent should do the trick quite nicely, thank you.
22. April 2008 @ 22:30 ( Permalink )
But if it’s clear already and you need it to be clearer still, then it’s a question of when you stop showing and start telling.
22. April 2008 @ 22:53 ( Permalink )
To me it’s really more of a question of showing better than anything else.
23. April 2008 @ 09:01 ( Permalink )
Ah.
So your problem with this movie is a political and/or ideological one, and not a storytelling one as such?
23. April 2008 @ 09:35 ( Permalink )
Heh… Okay, one last try at this:
Whether the movie is “pro-American”, as I believe some would see it, or slightly critical of their lack of post-war support, which was how I mostly interpreted it, isn’t as important to me as how I felt it landed somewhere in between these stances.
Therefore, I guess you could say that it’s more of a storytelling issue than anything else.
24. April 2008 @ 09:29 ( Permalink )
I still don’t see - you feel like a story, for being a good story, must take a definite stance? Because that sounds really strange to me.
24. April 2008 @ 09:35 ( Permalink )
No, I’ve never said a good story must take a definitive stance.
This isn’t an endorsement of the US’s actions during this conflict, but it could’ve conveyed that more openly than it did. As it is, I do believe that those who’d benefit the most from watching this wouldn’t walk away with the message that they were supposed to. And I find that sad, ’cause if it had just been a bit clearER, it’d all be all right.
Mind you, this isn’t a major complaint of mine.; it’s just something I noticed and lamented enough to make a mention of.
24. April 2008 @ 09:51 ( Permalink )
It’s a story, dude, it’s not a political pamphlet. I fail to see how the inherent lack of outright telling someone what to think about something is a bad thing in storytelling.
24. April 2008 @ 10:03 ( Permalink )
Seems to me we’re arguing over interpretations here, so let’s go back to the more or less source material:
“My biggest issue with this film is probably that I didn’t think it succeeded properly in showing us that the US isn’t God’s Greatest Nation and that it’s made some Big Mistakes.”
Didn’t it? Didn’t the innumerable displays of the interesting little peccadilloes, to quote Pratchett, that went on behind the Washington political scene kinda suggest that American democracy isn’t everything the propaganda says it is? And didn’t the whole of the political establishment — which supposedly represents the people — make some pretty damn big mistakes? Take, for example, the Islamabad embassy CIA guy, or the Congressmen who almost laughed at the proposition that they should finance a couple of schools in Afghanistan?
I thought it did this quite splendidly. Like I said, I might have wanted a sentence about the geopolitical importance of Afganistan as a gateway to Iran, Pakistan and the Indian Ocean, or perhaps a reference to the moronic Domino theory that influenced American foreign policy so heavily during the Cold War, but seeing as these weren’t necessarily part of the motivations of the main characters (at least not of Charlie Wilson; that rightwing lunatic society woman might be a different story entirely, from what I’ve seen of her elsewhere), I’m suspecting that A. this want of mine might be a result of me being a history and political science geek, and B. that the inclusion of these elements wouldn’t necessarily result in a better movie.
“Sure, it wraps up the whole thing with a quote about how the US *should* have done a better job in helping the Afghans after the war, but I got left with a feeling that the movie had just spent two hours implying that the US is so goddamned powerful that a senator and a five guys from the CIA is enough to bring down the biggest nation on the face of the Earth, and that’s when they’re not even trying properly.”
Well, were and did they not? Granted, Saudi-Arabia contributed with about as much financial aid to the Mujahedin, who, obviously, did their share of the work, too, but it was undeniably Charlie Wilson who was the catalyst, the guy upset and brave enough to make that first step.
“It’s actually a heroic tale about how one man’s efforts can change the world, but it didn’t quite feel like that to me.”
But your description of the movie made it seem like that was exactly how it made you feel, and and that this is what you thought it was wrong with it?
Also, it felt so to me, so we disagree there, at least, if all this other stuff turns out to be just superficial fluff.
24. April 2008 @ 11:43 ( Permalink )
Bah. So much time spent arguing over such a small niggle! This is teh famed Curse O’ teh Intarwebs. I can’t comment any more without repeating myself, so I refer you to previous comments and posts if you require any further explanation of this trivial little matter
25. April 2008 @ 00:53 ( Permalink )
Curse O’ teh Intarwebs… Verdsvevensvådebøn?
25. April 2008 @ 03:17 ( Permalink )