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| Charlie Wilson's War | 
| Category: Movie
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  121 reviews
Sales Rank: 3195
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 103 minutes
ASIN: B001688V2E
Theatrical Release Date: December 21, 2007
Release Date: October 6, 2008 (New: This Week)
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| Customer Reviews:
Surprisingly enjoyable January 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's not often that I come away from a Tom Hanks movie feeling entertained: on a scale of one to ten, one being Carrot Top and ten being Laurence Olivier, I'd rank Hanks about a three. Still, his performance as the titular hero of "Charlie Wilson's War" is so good that even my long-standing dislike of the man's acting style is quashed, Hanks is excellent and so is this movie.
The plot, briefly, concerns Wilson, a small-time good-time U.S. Senator, whose covert efforts to fund the war in Afghanistan against the Russians in the early eighties raise a billion dollars in unofficial weaponry and training. He's aided in his quest to help the Afghanis by faithful secretary Bonnie Bach ("Enchanted"s delightful Amy Adams, in fine form), Texas devout Christian socialite and sometime-consort Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), and Gust Avrokotos (Philip Seymour-Hoffman), a grizzled, experienced CIA Agent.
Performances in this movie are all top-drawer, with Hanks and Seymour-Hoffman having the kind of instantly believable screen chemistry that makes their exchanges a pleasure to watch. Roberts' role is quite small, but she plays it well; Hanks himself gives a likeable and accomplished turn as Charlie Wilson, and Philip Seymour-Hoffman's work here proves once again why he's such an important actor - he steals the show, but does it without resorting to corniness or mugging for the audience.
The script is fantastic, Adam Sorkin's screenplay is witty and literate, and straightforward enough so that even people (like me!) who have difficulty retaining political information for more than thirty seconds will feel drawn in and compelled to find out how Charlie Wilson's War plays out.
Direction is good, Mike Nichols is usually more interesting than this, but then, with such a good script and such excellent character portrayals by such fine actors, there's no need for directorial showiness: "Charlie Wilson's War" is extremely watchable without any extra help.
Wholeheartedly recommended as one of the better Big Movies to come out of Hollywood recently, and a nicely lighthearted look at the Political Drama genre, "Charlie Wilson's War" gives you the "I'm watching a really good movie" feeling in spades, and doesn't disappoint - the ending comes fast and seems a bit rushed (I, for one, could have done with seeing a little more of the post-war fallout), but the vast, vast majority of this tale is well-made, well-told and absolutely worth watching.
Gives short shrift to the blowback part of the story January 24, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I liked this movie well enough, but feel it was an incomplete adaptation of George Criles' excellent book. Mike Nichols' adaptation basically stops at the point where the Russians are pushed out of Afganistan. There's a small vignette where Charlie Wilson has trouble getting funding once the retreat has happened, meant to symbolize Wilson's pithy comment that "we f---ed up the end game." And Philip Seymour Hoffman's Gust Avrakotos has a good exchange in the 'victory' party where he accurately lays out the impending peril. But, in general, the movie gives short shrift to all the fallout after 'triumph' - Kabul flattened by fractious warlords, the rise of the Taliban, the growing legend and myth of the role of the 'Afghan Arabs' (later to become Al Qaeda), and a general overall sequence of events that Criles calls 'Blowback.' All of these factors have a contributing hand in what eventually leads to 9/11. In short, I like the reviewer on this page who entitled his piece "Be careful what you ask for." Exactly.
Casting-wise, I never cottoned to Julia Roberts in the role of Joanne Herring. I thought Tom Hanks did a passable job as Charlie Wilson, but I don't think it ranks with his best work. Basically, Philip Seymour Hoffman owns the movie. He's brilliant, getting just the right tone of anger, bullheadedness, dismissiveness and - most importantly - effectiveness, the very qualities that Criles celebrates about Avrakotos in his book. MPAA voters agree with this assessment: with the exception of Hoffman's well-deserved nod, the movie was shut out in the nominations announced earlier this week.
 Charlie Wilson's War January 24, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I highly recommend it as both entertaining and profound in its message. As you watch it, try substituting "NATO & American forces" every time "The Soviet Union Army" is mentioned and "Christians" for "Communists" and it becomes even clearer why Bush has us on a mission impossible.
 Should have been re-scripted and called "Ronald Reagan's War" January 23, 2008
8 out of 21 found this review helpful
Charlie Wilson was an important player in helping to rid Afghanistan of the Soviets, but history shows it was Ronald Reagan and his team, Bill Casey in the CIA, etc., who were the constant and most powerful organizing agents to send the missiles to shoot down Soviet helicopters, and who established policy directives to make the Soviets pay a high price for their invasion and barbarism in Afghanistan -- which was but one facet of the COMINTERN's push for world domination, of the Cold War. The movie doesn't go into this aspect, but that's typical Hollywood leftism, not to mention the 100 million victims of communist atrocity during the 20th Century. A good summary article on this is "Hollywood's Sins of Omission" By: Dr. Paul Kengor, which can easily be found on internet. Hollywood typically screws up history (just look at the seditious conduct of many top stars), either trying to make the Americans the bad-guys of history and current events, twisting history to make a celebrity star appear more heroic by making his enemy more villainous (as in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot", where a British officer was falsely tarnished as a mass-murderer of civilians), Speilberg's inserting the obligatory American soldier machine-gunning captured German prisoners at Normandy (the reverse happened many times, in fact), or outright falsely claiming Americans accomplished things -- as with the rescuing of the Enigma machine from a captured Nazi U-boat -- which actually was an heroic mission pulled off by the British. The lesson is, don't trust your history or current-events to Hollywood and the glamor-crowd.
Be Careful What You Ask For January 21, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a very good film. It is well written and well acted and even Julia Roberts does pretty good in her role although miscast. Tom Hanks does an excellent job as Charlie Wilson but the star performance goes to Hoffman who plays the CIA agent. There is no attempt to portray Wilson as heroic or to minimize his sleaze. Perhaps the best and most realistic scene in the film is the audience with Prsident Zia. This is a short scene but very blunt and to the point. It is followed by the watershed event which is the visit to the refugee camp. From this point on the film sort of coasts to its climax, which is the withdrawal of the mighty Red Army.
The issue I have with this film is its narrowness. It fails to give any reason for the incursion by the Russians other than raw Imperialism. It fails to show the Mujahadeen for what they truly were radical Islamofascists rather than the freedom fighters portrayed. General Zia has a small role but the fact that he himself was a radical Muslim who introduced Sharia Law as the law of the land is ignored. The fact that he laid the foundation for subsequent events in Afghanistan by his radical Islamic beliefs and pandering to the radical Muslims is not mentioned. These oversights may not be totally relevant to Charlie Wilson but they are relevant to subsequent events. Charlie Wilson is portrayed as a flawed -- well greatly flawed -- person and one of little depth. He never understood or even tried to understand the actual situation, he only saw the suffering, which he blamed exclusively on the Russians. So the film is very well done, entertaining, and well worth watching, but it fails to address the ramifications of Charlie's intercession in events that he really didn't understand. So it is a good film but very narrow in its focus. Charlie Wilson did a good deed but it is well worth remembering that no good deed goes unpunished. We are still suffering from Charlie's good heart and lack of strategic vision.
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