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| Charlie Wilson's War | 
| Category: Movie
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  131 reviews
Sales Rank: 9818
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 103 minutes
ASIN: B001688V2E
Theatrical Release Date: December 21, 2007
Release Date: October 6, 2008
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great movie, check it out! June 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had been meaning to see this movie for a long time, and I'm really glad I did. I had heard a couple of less-than-glowing reviews, so I was prepared to not like certain aspects, but I found it very interesting, extremely well acted & the script was excellent. The actors seemed to riff off of one another. The dialogue was fast, witty, sharp & funny as hell! The subject matter is interesting, sadly still relevant in that there are many atrocities occurring around the world, but to catch a glimpse of some behind-the-scenes workings was intriguing & illuminating. This movie is well worth a watch, and the acting is very strong. Tom Hanks & Phillip Seymour Hoffman are both brilliant in their roles, and I really enjoyed Julia Roberts' performance too. Overall, this movie is interesting, funny, sharp, and again relevant to the world today. It doesn't sugar coat the subject matter or tie anything up in a neat little bow, it addresses flawed systems and 'solutions' and reminds us that the world is a very complicated place. A great script handled with skill.
Rai Aren, co-author of Secret of the Sands
True Story June 24, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
What a wonderful story, and it's based on true events. This movie is highly recommended. It is also very well acted!!
very enjoyable June 23, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Based on a true story (although overstating the importance) this movie is a short ,but not complete look at the Afghanistan war. Charlie Wilson had a role but certainly not as central as the movie implies. For a better perspective read "Ghost Wars" by Steve Coll. However the movie was fun to watch.
 Charlie Wilson's List June 23, 2008
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
There are many, many shocking things about this movie. The first of which is that it was written by Aaron Sorkin. I've invested in Sorkin's previous work, and was shocked to see his name in the closing credits of this awful movie. Second of all, I was even more shocked to see the positive ratings this trash has gotten from Amazon reviewers. Maybe I'm in the minority here (I certainly am on this site) but this film is one of the worst I've seen, bar none.
There is literally nothing good about this movie. There are a few things that aren't altogether awful (such as Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance), but when nothing in an entire movie can be described as "good," you know you've got a whole mess of problems at work. Here is a list that just cracks the iceberg.
1. There is absolutely nothing done by the filmmakers to get the audience involved with the story. There is no suspense, no character development, no character moments, no storytelling techniques used to pull the viewers into the story. It's just a sequence of film that I cared absolutely nothing about while watching it. I understand that this is based on a true story, so some will argue with this point. However, I'd counter that a true story deserves to be well done, because if a sequence of non-fictional events are worth telling, there is certainly an interesting story behind them. With better writing, a different director, a different producer, and a different cast, this could have been a poignant exploration of one man's journey to make a difference by aiding a cause he truly believed in. What this actually came out as is a sexist, dumbed-down mockery of real events.
2. This is based on a true story. They even had real footage blended in with the plot of the film, which further grounds this film in reality. However, if you plan on grounding the film in reality so much, why would you have the rest of the movie be so blatantly silly? Women in tight sweaters and skirts make up the entirety of Charlie Wilson's staff, and are draped all over his office like furniture. Not only does this add an undercurrent of objectification of women to the film, it makes for horribly cheesy scenes that totally pull the viewer out of the reality of the film.
3. There is not one scene here to establish a morally grey area. Americans are good, Russians are bad. Point blank, period. I'm sorry, but that's bull and makes for horrible viewing. All the best war movies show the morally grey area of combat and war as a whole, that two ideologies are at conflict and neither is good or evil, but that both sides are real people at conflict with each other. Not so here. This movie neglects that superbly intriguing moral grey area for cheap jokes and contrived speeches.
4. You know a movie is bad when an hour and forty minutes feels like you just watched The Stand. Twice.
Very simply, this film is a mockery of real life events that isn't worth your time. If the story of Charlie Wilson was worth telling, which I'm sure it was, I wish a more competent team had tackled the subject matter. This sinker easily takes a place on my Worst 20 Movies list.
1/10
 Utter Bollox June 23, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
This film is dishonest, hypocritical, and manipulative throughout. I've given it a second star only because there is - credit where it's due - excellent characterization, witty scripting, and superior production values. But as a "history" of the Afghan War or Congressman Wilson's involvement therein, it's disingenuous pablum.
Wilson was not merely some disinterested observer undergoing an epiphany at sight of so much human suffering in the border refugee camps. He was a knowing and conscious CIA cutout, with a track record of Middle East involvement on behalf of Israel and East Texas oilmen. He raised money the old-fashioned pork barrel way to circumvent restrictions on the Agency; thus avoiding the kind of flak dished out to Oliver North who circumvented Congress as well. Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts' character) was no mere overly-religious society matron, bleeding for the Afghans' struggle for freedom of faith; but rather a full-fledged member of the religious New Right, out to enforce its own fundamentalist Taliban morality on American society.
The premise that it was the Afghan "muj" and their Stingers that broke the Red Army, which in turn "caused" the collapse of the USSR, is the film's essential and nonsensical theme. The decay of said regime began before the Afghan War - indeed, the war's very launching was a symptom of that decay, much as Chechnya for the successors of Moscow. To the real-life Wilson, supporting the Afghans was payback for Vietnam. Feeding the Afghan War - as with the Contras, or Jonas Savimbi of Angola - was part of the Reagan strategy of creating "two, three many Vietnams" and, if not rolling back Red forces, at least bleeding them white. Encouraging this war to continue, rather than attempting to settle it, did no service to the Afghans whom Wilson allegedly wept for.
The film tries to cover its loose postwar ends by portraying US "abandonment" of the Afghans; implying that if "America had stayed the course" (like Iraq, presumably) then none of the ensuing problems there would be pestering us now. Wilson of all people should knew that Afghanistan - like Nicaragua, like Angola - was a mere means to an end. It was on that pragmatic basis that he "sold" the war in the first place. It had served its purpose. That the US is now taking the role of the Soviet military is as ironic as the film's portrayal of those soldiers: we're treated to a lengthy setup of a Russian helicopter pilot sneering his contempt for traditional morality (like any good Red atheist or Hollywood glitterati) when he's kaboomed by a Stinger to the joyous wonderment of muj on the ground. We'll never see such fundamentalist joy on US screens directed at secular US personnel, of course. If Charlie Wilson's War was payback for Vietnam, then the current imbroglio can be seen as payback for CWW. This film's gloating is doubtless designed to cover that odiously loose end as well.
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