Charlie Wilson's War

Solid, entertaining and uncontroversial, 22 January 2008

Author: gary-444 from United Kingdom


An odd film, in that the fine ingredients don't quite deliver the result you expect. Tom Hanks delivers an excellent performance in the title role, convincing, but restrained,qualities that Julia Roberts, playing a wealthy Texan Socialite appears oblivious to.

At 97 minutes the film bounces along from scene to scene, and location to location, aided by a wry, satirical script with a number of "laugh out loud" moments.The dark machinations of politics "on the Hill" are painfully exposed without fear or favour, yet somehow the film falls short of greatness.

Ironically its finely crafted component parts are also its downfall.It is pretty funny, but it isn't a comedy.It is pretty satirical, but falls short of satire.It is a "Bio pic" which falls short of a biography, and it is also a history of events, without being a history.

The politics of arming the good guys(the Afghans)against the bad guys (the Russians), and then having to treat the Russians as good guys (in the war against terror) and the Afghans as bad guys (in the war against terror)is pretty familiar to European audiences whose governments have been experts in swapping sides as fast as a Warlord for the past 100 years , but this may seem less familiar to US audiences.

Very agreeable light entertainment - which could have been so much more