Academy Award® winners Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman star in this compelling and witty film from Oscar®-winning director Mike Nichols and Primetime Emmy®-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). Based on the outrageous true story, Charlie Wilson's War shows how one congressman who loved a good time, one Houston socialite who loved a good cause and one renegade CIA agent who loved a good fight conspired to bring about the largest covert operation in history.
Political movies about backroom negotiations need not be dry or heavy-handed, as Charlie Wilson's War delightfully proves. Based on the true story of playboy congressman Wilson's efforts to fund Afghanistan's defense against the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, the film is borne along on breezy attitude and a peppery script by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin. Wilson, played by Tom Hanks (who also produced), is the perfect hero for this kind of tale, because there's nothing perfect or heroic about him: He's a highball-swilling, fanny-pinching gadabout who becomes radicalized on the issue of helping the Afghans against their mighty aggressor. He has help in the form of a right-wing Texas anti-Communist (Julia Roberts) with a genius for raising money, and a sardonic CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman, stealing the show) who lacks all the social skills Wilson has in abundance. Sorkin's syncopated speech is just the ticket for director Mike Nichols, who understands exactly how to keep this kind of political comedy popping (the complicated story comes in at a hair over 90 minutes, amazingly). Some scoundrels are on the right side of the angels, and the movie's Charlie Wilson is one of them. --Robert Horton
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Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
How an east Texas congressman made Afghanistan safe for the Taliban:
BEWARE SPOILERS!! (and pompous displays of semi-relevant erudition) Director Mike Nichols is a past master of women's point of view films that go beyond the narrow confines of the "chick flick." Silkwood (1983); Heartburn (1986); Working Girl (1988); and the very fine Postcards from the Edge (1990) come to mind. His first feature was an adaptation of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor back in 1966. He followed the next year with the... more info
Coherence Left on the Cutting Room Floor?:
I'm giving this film three stars only because the people I watched it with were amused by it. Otherwise I'd go lower. It looked to me like a botched job, the sort of film where the script writer, the director, and the producers couldn't get on the same page and so released a compromised product that satisfied nobody. It's odd to read the other reviews here on ammy; many of them grind political axes, but the radical right-wingers accuse the film of being leftist propaganda, while the liberals accuse it of... more info
The best character was not Tom Hanks nor Julia Roberts:
Charlie Wilson's war is an enjoyable vehicle for making the point that someone can have a very flawed personal life, but still help humanity. I could tell Tom Hanks had a lot of fun playing the hard drinking, womanizing, Charlie Wilson. However, he didn't seem entirely comfortable in the role, which would have been more convincingly played by Michael Douglas or Jack Nicholson (although granted Nicholson's a bit too old for the role)--someone who is better at playing a womanizing jerk. And the camera man had... more info
worth it:
Tom Hanks is the star of the film, and his acting abilities continue to amaze me. He can apparently do it all. The story is pretty good, though keep in mind there's more talking than action, but that's the way it is in the life of a congressman. The movie feels longer than it really is. The women who were working with Tom Hanks are VERY hot! Great movie
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