Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride
Patricia Vidal

Charlie Wilson's
War
Directed by Mike Nichols
Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin

Charlie Wilson's War is a perfect fit with this year's award season.  It is a wonderful, misshaped, inspired, insipid mess of a good movie. 

The film has been cut, re-cut, re-shot, re-cut, etc ... but that is pretty much Mike Nichols' way of doing things on his best and worst films.  But Charlie Wilson's War feels more schizophrenic than any Nichols film I can recall.  There are worse films in his filmography, definitely.  Like I wrote ... I like the movie.  But never have I felt so much like Nichols had no idea of what exact tone he was after, from start to finish. 

The film, as the trailer makes clear, is the mostly true story of a hard-partying Congressman who is a quiet member of the committee that funds covert activities and is recruited into giving a damn about the situation in Afghanistan while the Russians were killing thousands without much resistance in the 80s.  And I think this is where things started getting odd.

It's a terrific story.  Cynical, disconnected politician who drinks, drugs, and skirts gets turned into an aggressive do-gooder who really changes the world by pushing the U.S. into a covert war against the Russians.  But in today's political climate, the notion of funding a covert war in the Middle East  - one which historically, by many news organizations' perspectives, would later lead to radicalized young men and the instability that would foster the dominance in the country of the Taleban and al-Qaeda – is a heroic act ... well, it's a little too friendly to the very unpopular current President of the United States.

The story – and these are minor spoilers – follows the left-wing Wilson, who is drawn into the whole project by the extreme right wing and religious character played by Julia Roberts, Joanne Herring.  It distracts from the politic implications that the characters have sexual chemistry.  After all, Charlie is a womanizer and Joanne is sexy, rich, and powerful.  But I got the distinct vibe that the notion of left and right working together and the right not being wrong - even if it is for the "wrong" reasons - was being carefully avoided. 

It's not that there is no cynicism in the script or that they never address the idea that things change - right or wrong or right or left - and always do.  But here was the covert funding of the war in Afghanistan that happened during the Reagan Administration, leading to the Taliban, who we are still chasing.  But it was right at the time ... at least on some plane.  On top of that, there is an argument made subtly in the film that funding the Afghanis made the war so expensive for the Russians that it was part of the end of the Cold War.  But again ... it gives Reagan, the Republican, room for an ounce of credit.  Needless to say, Reagan makes no appearance in this film, for mockery or praise.  (One wonders why the film doesn't credit Democrat Wilson for what Republican Reagan claimed was his win over the Russians.)

In any case, that disconnect is an ongoing issue throughout the film.  Each time it gets serious, it seems to seek to undercut itself by not closing.  And the humor, which is where the whole thing does sing, keeps getting undercut, as though the filmmakers didn't like that they were reducing, say, Afghani leaders to comic bit players.  (One of the funniest pieces of the script is undermined in the cutting, seemingly disallowed its obviously intended Marx Bros qualities.)

Often, we are offered a moment that seems like it is going to be the home run we have been expecting.  One scene, for instance, has a leader distracted by a belly dancer while the real business goes on with his underling, who is at the same time fighting with an opposing player.  Well ... if ever there was going to be a jaw-dropping scene, this was it.  A magnificent dance of darkness and absurdity and reality and raw politics ... Kubrick, Ritchie, Ashby ... Nichols(!) ... kinda stuff.  But while it is good, it never achieves the magic we are expecting ... craving ...

It's like the movie really wants to be a magical piece about how horrible it all is, but how any one man can step up and make real change, but how that may still end up going wrong.  But to be that honest and that unconventional is the stuff of true genius ... and while the film is so accomplished, it is short of genius.  I knew Three Kings ... I knew Dr Strangelove ... I knew Lawrence of Arabia ... and sir, you are none of them.  In a weird way, the movie is a more serious, but oddly less effective riff on Elaine May's Ishtar.  It's like it wants to be a whole movie on the Charles Grodin and Jack Weston characters in which the Dustin Hoffman character is truly enlightened.

What is genius here is Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who has two of the great character entrances of all time, much more this year,here and in Before The Devil Knows You Are Dead. The entrances alone are enough for Oscar nominations.  And he just gets better and better in both films.  Great character, great work.  And it's no small thing that the character is the one pure truth-teller in the movie.  It needed more of that.

Tom Hanks is not far behind.  He puts on Charlie Wilson like a warm, old glove.  It is a perfect fit.  The hair is not forced.  The age is fitting.  And the quiet, modest charm is pure Hanks.  It is, really, the wheel peg performance, without the fireworks that has won Hanks Oscars.  It is more of a comedic turn on his Saving Private Ryan performance ... solid, real, central.  His best work since Cast Away, really.  Real mature movie star stuff.

Julia Roberts is game and doesn't cheat with the Big Julia Smile, but she is really miscast here.  She is 11 years younger than Hanks in real life and the character feels like she should be 11 years older than Hanks ... or at least the same age.  Susan Sarandon would have been right ... older, but still sexy enough to have a younger man of taste anxious to bed her.  Streep would have made it work.  Keaton somehow feels "left," which disqualifies her ... but that generation would work.  Julie Christie.  I don't blame Roberts ... it's just that the whole dynamic changes when it is sex with another pretty woman and not a woman who takes whatever she wants, including sex.  Julia Roberts is the woman who survived two husbands, not the bitch who killed them off, lived wealthy off the money, and found God while all the while demeaning every other woman in the room.  It's just not her.  (It suddenly occurs to me how well this film might have worked with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith ... hmm ... Phillip Bosco as the top Congressman ... Joan Cusack as the loyal sidekick assistant ... sometimes a fantasy ... )

The rest of the recognizable cast is mostly wasted.  Amy Adams is working this "I love him ... I love him not" thing that feels like it got shredded in post.  Emily Blunt turns up for no other reason than to look great in underwear and tanning lotion.  Seeing Om Puri is always a great joy ... not too much to do here.  Same with Shaun Toub, who is also great in The Kite Runner, but seems to be about to become a genuinely great character here who never quite emerges.  Ned Beatty is a shadow of Arthur Jensen.  And Mary Bonner Baker, Shiri Appleby, Rachel Nichols, and Wynn Everett as "Charlie's Angels" (my coinage), an office staff of beauties, is another great idea that actually does come together in one scene, but never quite dots the i-s and crosses the t-s. 

All that said ... most of the movie works pretty well as basic moviegoing fare.  It is funny and charming and sad at times – though rarely when the film tries to tug our hearts with images of dead children or Afghan suffering – but you keep waiting for it all to come together and grab your throat ... laughing, crying, screaming. 

Like I said ... it is par for the season.  When at one moment, there is a stale old gag about obnoxious Russians in helicopters getting ready to kill some more Afghans when the poor locals pull out a shoulder launcher just in the nick of time, you kind of sit them and wonder, "What f-ing movie is this?!?!"  It works on such a sophisticated level at times and then, voom, a bit out of a Three Stooges film.

And there is this ... when you are trying to dramatize something so big and so difficult that it really is impossible to dramatize, I believe strongly in the One Story rule.  That is, pick one or two victims, give them a killer speech and/or action, and make them the symbol for all of it ... then pull back and show the size of the problem.  Nichols actually has the last part, a magnificent process shot, at one point.  But there is something oddly disconnective about five or six little scenes of characters without names or characterization suffering.  Do it right once and then pull back.  Seeing the fifth woman mourn and eat dirt becomes cloying when it should be devastating.

This also reminds me of another scene, which kind of works on this principle, when a senior official is brought to the war zone and sees the devastation.  Good idea.  But then, it seems, again, like the movie just doesn't want to be as harsh as it needs to be right then.  Tricking an idiot into doing the right thing should be fun ... not sincere.  But again, tone, tone, tone ... it's just all over the place.

I do like the movie.  Seeing it again will be no chore, on Hanks and Hoffman alone.  But it will be a battle to get to Best Picture.  Comedies like The Savages, Lars, and Juno are more sure of themselves.  Dramas like The Diving Bell & The Butterfly and Into The Wild go deeper into the soul.  Small films like Before The Devil Knows You're Dead and Michael Clayton are just plain better.  And then there are Sweeney Todd and No Country For Old Men and Hairspray and others.

Charlie Wilson's War is another story well told that should have been a masterpiece ... and isn't.   It could well be a $100 million movie for Universal and have a seriously competitive run for Phil Hoffman in Supporting and you never know, but in a year with so much that really does work, even with limitations ... tough sledding.  I look forward to the Director's Cut in Hi-Def someday.

-David Poland