Do we have a thread for Charlie Wilson's War?

Yeah. I just saw this last night. I really liked it. I thought Sorkin tried to give it an emotional ending that it didn't earn, but when he was just doing clever Sorkin, I loved it. And I generally hate Tom Hanks + Julia Roberts.

Of course PSH was amazing. I could watch it again just for him.

Saw it a week ago and enjoyed it. Noir humor was well done and the politics didn't smash you over the head constantly. Lots of solid 80s touches and didn't make the "ferriners" out to be idiots. Roberts was implausible, PSH excellent, Hanks and his bevy of beauties believable (except maybe the preacher's pole-dancing daughter, that was a bit much). Ned Beatty and whoever played his long-suffering wife were perfectly cast.

is Wilson supposed to be sympathetic?

The Fake RIP Ned Beatty 1937-2007

The politics are transparently bullshit -- it's camp really. But as a movie it was really enjoyable. I was expecting a sad lol-90s lol-Sorking thing but it wa funny and smart and fresh. This is my favorite PSH role.

is Wilson supposed to be sympathetic?

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, January 10, 2008 4:01 AM

I don't think you're supposed to forgive him his faults or anything, but Hanks makes him into a protagonist you root for. I caught myself feeling a bit of "yeah!" when jailbait brings him that note from PSH: "We just shot 3 of them down."

The jailbait scenes were Classic. And I don't think you were supposed to root for Hanks (especially with our 20/20 knowledge that they were really training Osama and fellows over there). But he's a fun character and enjoyable to watch IMHO.

I haven't seen this (hi hoos can I put SPOILERS in your thread title? thanks) but as mr. shinefield points out the hindsight we have changes the story not a bit - I'd have fucking rooted for the guy, I'm no revisionist in that regard.

Or drop the line at the end of my last post? Either way, wasn't tryna spoilers, sry.

I don't care that much

It's a little subversive that we end up rooting for the guys shooting rocket launchers (RL's or RPG's or somethin?) at helicopters. Not so much because of the context (civilians shooting at the Communists) but because (at least speaking for myself) we've been trained to have negative reactions to those visual images.

And Tombot, you're right that the hindsight is very superficial while watching. Sorkin doesn't hit you on the head with it.

(Btw, you can call me Mordy.)

Did anybody else hear the sound during the Epiphany

I thought it was a nice touch.

What are you referring to, HOOS?

this was surprisingly good. amy adams underused in the role of donna from 'the west wing'; roberts useless; PSH (obviously) great; lots of fun. awesome script, probably needed a feistier director, but also one who isliterate, can do ping-pong dialogue, and isn't a cosseted small-art-college-educated poindexter -- ie probably no-one that young.

What are you referring to, HOOS?

-- Mordechai Shinefield, Thursday, January 10, 2008 5:03 AM

*spoilers*

At the end when PSH is telling Wilson about how "the crazies are pouring into Kabul," and that they've gotta do something about this before it gets really bad. Wilson looks at the report in his hand, not reading, just staring at it. Then we hear the sound of a plane flying overhead.

Nicely done, I thought.

apparently sorkin wrote a more 'munich'-y ending where CW is in his office on 9/11 and you get the pentagon taken down. i thought this ending was still a bit overdone -- CIA guy wants to build schools...? -- but still better than the original idea.

I half noticed what could be a strange match cut - when julia roberts gets out of the pool, her butler is behind her and one of her dogs is on a sun lounger. Then it cuts to hanks in his office, with a jailbait assistant behind him and a cat on the desk.

i thought tom hanks was lols also. i wouldn't normally go for this kind of thing -- i fucken hated 'closer' -- but i don't understand the hate/indifference.

peter bradshaw:

The good guys win; the Soviets get their asses kicked, but for those of us watching the film in 2008, there is something important being missed out. Every schoolchild surely knows about the terrible irony, the blowback? The fact that the mujahideen, armed by the United States, morphed into the Islamist haters of American freedom? Well, this movie spends its time averting its eyes from that terrible fact, and fastidiously declines to spell it out, other than with some supercilious warnings from Gust, and a fatuous and redundant postscript before the credits about "having fucked up the endgame". Granted, the movie's historical span finishes with the 1980s, but it's quite uninterested in the Afghans' mental world. The point is to celebrate Charlie's cheerful, gutsy resourcefulness; he's a nice version of Col Oliver North.

lols 'that terrible fact' is kind of central to the whole movie! gus's warnings aren't supercilious, and he actually *tries* to launch into the 'zen master' story *during their first meeting*.

but also the logic of the 'oh noes we funded the muj and then they became al-quaeda' argument can lead to head-in-the-sand ron-paulism, and its even less attractive european soft-left version, which bradshaw gets into here.

surely the film flips that over anyway; the whole thing is about ridiculous alliances between 'opposites'... such as the US-sunni alliance that was probably sewn up only after this film was written.

I spent a good part of Charlie Wilson's War thinking about its faults. It felt like Aaron Sorkin's set pieces were being awkwardly slotted into a film that didn't really know what to do with them, his off-kilter dialogue rubbing up uncomfortably against perfunctory, expository scenes squarely there to "do" a part of the plot. The Afghanistan scenes were particularly creaky.

What life the film had came from PSH doing his thing and Tom Hanks putting on the charm enough to almost let you forget he was Tom Hanks (helped by the fact that his jowls have taken over his face so much he looks more like Al Gore than himself these days). The film's politics felt somehow lost in translation and rewrite. It was hard to believe the director of The Graduate had become so unfocused and unsure of himself.

But then, you know what? The film finished (not especially satisfactorily) and I realised the time had flown by, I'd never felt bored, and I had a smile on my face. So, if it's a failure, then it's a failure where the sum of its parts somehow make it worth it all the same.

Oh, and how wasted was Emily Blunt in that role?

It was very entertaining and I enjoyed Hanks much more than I was expecting (Roberts another story). PSH was awesome as ever. I thought the script was deft and crisp, which surprised me because I kind of hate what I've seen by Sorkin. (to be fair I've only seen Sports Night and a couple of those craptacular Studio 60 episodes, ugh).

The Afghanistan scenes were particularly creaky.

^^I do agree with this though.

um WATCH THE WEST WING. seriously.

The Afghanistan scenes were particularly creaky.

yeah, agree with this. although when they take down the three hinds, that fucken rocked.

emily blunt was about fifth billed!! ridiculous.

mike nichols has always chosen/obtained fantastic scripts, but i wouldn't call him a particularly focused director at any point: he gets good performances out of people.

so i don't think it failed; it just needed a more coherent vision, more walk-and-talks, and amy gardner mary louise parker in the julia roberts role.

All the diplomatic scenes were kind of half-baked and unconvincing too, thinking about it. Om Puri was good as the Pakistani president, but his staff's characterisation didn't sit right (the script clumsily making the point that they were Western-educated and thought the US was useless) and that belly-dancing thing in Egypt misfired. And Ken Stott's "you're crazy but I'm in!" thing was all too corny.

And God, the Russian pilots chatting about their women to show they're just like us. Ouch.

Really, off American soil it was all over the place.

well the om puri thing was fucked coz zia was a pretty bad dude --- not really the point of the movie, and shit maybe he could turn on the charm, i dunno. but i lolled @ the scene with his advisers (which was very sorkin) and the scene with stott.

the russian pilots talking about their girlfriends was hilar -- it wasn't about them being like us, it was about the casualness with which guys like them kill people. exactly like US pilots now, as in the tapes of the 'friendly fire' strike on a british convoy. also it was kind of coen bros-lol, the non-sequitur of it.

Well OK, but that wasn't an interesting point to make to me in the context of the film, it didn't seem artfully done, and having that as the only (human) glimpse of the Russians just stuck out as clumsy and another misfire.

I agree that those scenes were thrilling though, and with this, upthread:

It's a little subversive that we end up rooting for the guys shooting rocket launchers (RL's or RPG's or somethin?) at helicopters. Not so much because of the context (civilians shooting at the Communists) but because (at least speaking for myself) we've been trained to have negative reactions to those visual images.

Depicting the excitement of victory in warfare was definitely one of the film's strengths.

i haven't been trained to have those negative reactions! shit was straight out of a 80s actioner, only w. hindsight it was lol-ier.

i think it was an interesting enough point about 'the banality of evil' and whatnot, because there was a lot of stuff about ruskies bayonetting pregnant women etc -- not sure how much that was 'true' (moreover, were the russians any more barbaric than any invasion force?), and these scenes sort of played against it and made the film less nakedly anti-russian.

of course the russians *are* just like us, and we too tried to invade afghanistan, and we too like to think it's for the good of all.

it was the "sound during the epiphany" that suddenly made me remember this was by Sorkin

You really don't feel instinctively "that's bad!" about people getting blown to bits, Enrique? OK, in an all-out fantasy action movie, maybe not, but in any kind of remotely serious context?

I think my problem with the politics of the film is that broadly liberal people can say "Dur - of course it's not backing Charlie Wilson's war - you don't need to tell people it all went to shit and that bin Laden was being trained, that's obvious!" Well, if the point is that obvious then what is the film doing, politically, but making doves feel smug about their stance? Maybe I just didn't get the subtleties of PSH's stance, with his mix of Zen unintended consequences and "let's kill some Russians" ballsiness. More likely, he was meant to be as confused and unheroic as the rest of them. Which is fine, but I dunno, the film felt like it was sometimes hinting to me that it had some greater wisdom to impart. Is "We fucked up the endgame and should have built some schools" it? Maybe it is.

I think "we always fuck up the endgame, can we stop doing that?" is about it.

though it probably depends on what you think the people going in to see it already believe.

julia roberts was kind of terrible in this, but it was passably entertaining.

i know, julia was rather disappointing. ny times gave her a rave review, too.

Worst of the afghan scenes was when the dudes ran out from behind the rock with a rocket launcher - looked straight out of monty python.

You really don't feel instinctively "that's bad!" about people getting blown to bits, Enrique? OK, in an all-out fantasy action movie, maybe not, but in any kind of remotely serious context?

um, no! especially when the people getting blown to bits are about to blow other people to bits, as here.

I think my problem with the politics of the film is that broadly liberal people can say "Dur - of course it's not backing Charlie Wilson's war - you don't need to tell people it all went to shit and that bin Laden was being trained, that's obvious!"

i think that it is all about PSH's zen thing, unintended consequences: just because you can't know the end result, doesn't mean you do nothing. i think the film *is* backing charlie wilson's war, and satirizing the pretty standard liberal position that the US should never have got into bed with the muj.

and there are characters in the film, old school company guys, who figure that pumping weapons and arms into pakistani intelligence & the muj may play out badly long-term -- but these guys are unsympathetic characters.

Worst of the afghan scenes was when the dudes ran out from behind the rock with a rocket launcher - looked straight out of monty python.

-- ledge, Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:19 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is why it was a good scene!

julia roberts' late 80s diane sawyer wig ftw

Dead.

His time at Annapolis is legendary (he and McCain tied for most demerits, ever).

Related. For those interested in American military history I recommend: The Nightingale's Song by Robert Timberg which chronicles Annapolis during the 60's (Wilson, McCain, Jim Webb, Oliver North, etc.)