There are ten minute stretches where Charlie Wilson’s War is a) one of the better movies of the year and b) one of the funnier movies of there year. Then there are stretches that clearly were mailed in. In the end the movie seems… dumb. Which is frustrating, because if they’d expanded that 90 minute running time to around 150 I think this could have been in the top five of the year without breaking a sweat.
There’s a chance your enjoyment will come down to how much history you know. If you don’t know any, and you’ve stumbled into this film because you dig Tom Hanks, well, you might end up in a decent mood afterwards. If you know a lot, and you’re waiting for the film to mean something, well, you’re probably going to end up sorely disappointed. That’s because, after the initial 75 minutes of comedy Charlie Wilson’s War seems to realize that it has no hope of making sense, no hope of providing any sort of real ending. So they pretty much just throw the credits up with a quote from the actual Charlie Wilson which is supposed to tie everything together. Ummm, no.
The story of the movie is the CIA’s covert war against Communism (and the USSR) in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Tom Hanks is Congressman Charlie Wilson, a seemingly unimportant man who happens to sit on a ton of very important committees. Spurred on by big donor Julia Roberts Charlie works with CIA operative Phil Seymour Hofman to get weapons and equipment into the hands of the Afghanis. Heck, even reading that paragraph back I’m conflicted as to how one would tell the story.
Now for the kudos section. As I mentioned this is a truly comic movie. Penned by Sorkin, the man who brought you West Wing the dialogue is beautiful and flowing. You absolutely love Tom Hanks in this movie, he’s breaking laws left and right but it’s hard not to pull for him. He is, for lack of a better word, madcap. Cocaine, strippers, booze, this guy is the full package. Hoffman and Roberts are also rock solid and by minute 45 or so you’re thinking “This is really working!”
Then it doesn’t. Why? Perhaps there is no real way to make this a comedy, a tale of so much death and destruction. Or perhaps there is, perhaps you have to laugh at the craziness of it all, but there is no way then to tell the complete story because these events are still affecting us to this day. What a nightmare this must have been to sell to financiers. You want to make a movie about the “freedom fighters” who would later become elements of the Taliban? A movie about Afghanistan fighting off a larger world power? And it’s a comedy? Hmm, we’ll get back to you. Whether the movie is trading depth for laughs, or laughs for depth, the equation gets jacked up as the movie heads towards home.
So, in the end, Charlie Wilson’s War should be about laughing, a light little tale. The only problem is they’ve wrapped it in the great political conflict of our era. I guess like most of the politicians of the past three decades they ran up against a major problem – they just didn’t have enough time to fix this mess.
