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Charlie Wilson is a womanising, alcoholic, coke-snorting congressman from Texas. But behind the decadent exterior lies an astute political mind, which he puts to helping the people of Afghanistan in the early 1980s when they have just been brutally invaded by the Soviet Union. With the help of angry and shambolic CIA agent Gust Avrakotos and socialite Joanne Herring, he sets about making unlikely alliances with Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, arms dealers and law makers. Their success is unparalleled and funding for covert operations against the Soviets rockets from five million to a billion dollars a year.
"The Graduate" director Mike Nichols continues the trend for Middle Eastern conflict movies with his latest offering. It's a shiny political romp that has a top-drawer cast and a big budget, which is used to tell of how one man made a huge difference. It opens at the end, showing how Wilson was honoured for his work with the CIA before flashing back to the beginning of the story after a "The following is based on a true story" subtitle. Presumably the makers thought anything this outlandish would look like fiction to a cine-literate audience and it does in places. In an attempt to bring authenticity to the narrative, Nichols uses date and place stamps and cuts in contemporary news footage from the period that tells you how events were perceived at the time. The director captures the look of the age with an excess of beige and formica, big candyfloss hair and hideous fashions - the decadence fairly leaps off the screen. But this is juxtaposed uncomfortably with images of child amputee burns victims and refugee camps, bringing home the gap between America and Afghanistan. However it is the excesses of the lead characters you remember rather than the cause they were fighting for, making the movie feel uneven.
The war sequences play out like an action movie from the 1980s; faceless
Russian fighters cackle as they do evil, only to be blown out of the sky by the righteous American-backed Mujahadeen. It is as though the filmmakers have no regard for the human cost of the conflict on the Soviet side. Rubbing salt into the wound is a running total of Russian units destroyed. It's one of many aspects that makes the film feel like a gung-ho affirmation of the American foreign policy of the time. But the film stock looks washed-out and some of the attempts to bring contemporary relevance to the story feel clumsy. For instance the movie opens with a turbaned figure in silhouette firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the camera. It draws parallels with current events in the Middle East, but feels caricatured. In fact most of the players feel like they lack real humanity, which blunts the satire and makes it difficult to care for any of them.
The comedy is well achieved; there's one scene in particular that stands out involving more entrances and exits than your average farce. But the comedy should be used to underline the main story instead of distracting from it. So what could have been a thought provoking dig at government policy feels more like a glossy political romp. There are worse ways to spend a hundred-and-two minutes of your life, but you'll be hard pressed to remember anything about the film once the credits roll.
The screenplay by "West Wing" writer Aaron Sorkin takes its lead from George Crile's book about the congressman. But the facts are related as edutaintment (educational entertainment) in quick succession by a whole series of fast-talking characters. So it's as though we're skating over the surface of the decade's events instead of investigating any of them fully. The film is populated almost exclusively by larger-than-life personalities jostling for our attention. There are no strait-laced politicians - everyone has some kind of peccadillo or Achilles heel to be exploited by the hero in his anti-Communist crusade. Although his aim may be to free the Afghan people of tyranny, the indigenous population is under-represented so we aren't rooting for them as we should. It feels like the whole endeavour is too easy to get off the ground for Champagne Charlie and the lack of detail in much of the political manoeuvring threatens to undermine the satire. When it looks like we're going to get to a real critique of US foreign policy, the film stops abruptly.
The characterisation is built on personality overcoming logic. Sorkin treats his leading man's character flaws (alcoholism, drug use and casual misogyny - he hires his all-female administrative staff on the basis of their looks) as amusing personality traits that make him such a colourful character. He also plays the many faux pas made by Charlie and his colleagues for laughs, despite their potential to undo all their good work. Gust Avrakatos is completely socially inept and has serious anger management issues, while Joanne Herring is a brassy, interfering busybody who won't take "no" for an answer. Peripheral characters aren't developed sufficiently, so Charlie's personal assistant Bonnie and his "jailbait" secretaries feel like stereotypes and there are too many oddballs (including a chess champion arms expert and a belly dancer) for the world of the film to ring true. The dialogue has its moments and is often droll. Though lines such as "You can teach 'em to type but you can't teach 'em to grow tits!" hardly endear the main character to you.
Tom Hanks has made a career of playing reliable everyman types, so when he steps out of his comfort zone, the result is always interesting, if not entirely successful. As Charlie Wilson, his accent brings back painful memories of his Forrest Gump drawl, making it hard to completely suspend your disbelief. He makes a decent fist of playing the alcoholic, politically incorrect and fast-talking congressman. He also underscores the character's honesty and plain-talking with the impression of a shrewd mind and strong political savvy. So he's oddly likeable.
As Joanne Herring, Julia Roberts hides the character's astute mind under a hideous peroxide hairdo and about a foot of makeup. Her persuasiveness is tempered by a demanding nature that suggests crossing her would be a very bad idea. I've yet to see a performance where Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn't give a hundred percent. As Gust Avrakatos he completely submerges himself in the role of the angry, unstable CIA agent with a chip on his shoulder after having been passed over for promotion. He's utterly horrible as the loud, rude, coarse, uncouth, tightly-wound ball of rage. But he is also utterly magnetic and occasionally hilarious, making him the most watchable person in the cast.
Amy Adams has the somewhat thankless task of playing Charlie's smart, perceptive personal assistant Bonnie Bach. She is an oasis of calm and normality amidst the cavalcade of attention-hungry oddballs in the story, but as such is one of the least memorable players. Also look out for Ken Stott as angry but funny Israeli agent Zvi.
The original music by James Newton Howard bounces all over the musical spectrum in his attempts to sum up the times and the events. So we get echoing Arabic pipes as the film opens, twangy electric steel guitar to introduce Charlie and elegiac warm brass and strings as we flash back to why he is considered a hero. He tries to add greater scope with serious, sweeping themes but undermines himself with jaunty classical strings and rousing choruses for the number of Russian units destroyed. He's more successful when using mournful pipes and dhiram with percussion and flute trills for the refugees. The other soundtrack choices tie the music to the period, so we hear Barry White, "Angel of the Morning" and David Bowie's "Let's Dance" at various points. The music works in context but not as a stand-alone body of work.
"Charlie Wilson's War" is an amusing stab at satirising the conflict that trained and armed the Taliban when America considered the Afghans friends. But it is somehow less than the sum of its parts; I think because it focuses on the personalities involved and not the solid outcomes of their work. It feels too light and frothy to truly resonate. The direction is solid, the writing droll and the performances appropriate to the style and subject matter. But though it is diverting, there's little in it that will stay with you for more than a couple of hours afterwards.
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Production Year: 1999 - Drama - Director: Dick Maas - Original Language: English - Classification: 18 years and over - Starring: William Hurt, Jennifer Tilly, Denis Leary, Michael Chiklis, Francesca Brown
Production Year: 1945 - Drama - Director: David Lean - Original Language: English - Classification: Parental Guidance - Starring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey, Cyril Raymond
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Jan 14th, 2009
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