Based on George Crile's best-selling book, Charlie Wilson's War boasts three Oscar-winning actors (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and crack screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The American President, TV’s The West Wing)—all under the helm of legendary director Mike Nichols. This high-powered team fires on all cylinders to tell the true story of how a literal “Good Time Charlie” congressman (Hanks), a powerful and beautiful Houston socialite (Roberts), and a street smart, rebellious CIA operative (Hoffman) come together—for very different reasons—to help oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. What resulted, to everyone’s surprise, was the largest and most successful covert operation in U.S. history—the effects of which are still being felt today.
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Charlie Wilson War movie overview
Although his name might not be known to many outside of East Texas, otherwise unremarkable congressman Charlie Wilson and an unlikely team of cohorts made history in the 1980s according to the new, fact-based film Charlie Wilson’s War. Their covert operation helped Afghan rebels rout the occupying Soviet military, and in a domino effect, hastened the end of the Cold War and ultimately contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. Quite a history lesson! But Charlie Wilson’s War is also a whip-smart piece of comic entertainment that explores the convoluted world of international politics and the many foibles of its all-too-human players.
Based on George Crile's best-selling book, Charlie Wilson's War boasts three Oscar-winning actors (Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and crack screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The American President, TV’s The West Wing)—all under the helm of legendary director Mike Nichols. This high-powered team fires on all cylinders to tell the true story of how a literal “Good Time Charlie” congressman (Hanks), a powerful and beautiful Houston socialite (Roberts), and a street smart, rebellious CIA operative (Hoffman) come together—for very different reasons—to help oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. What resulted, to everyone’s surprise, was the largest and most successful covert operation in U.S. history—the effects of which are still being felt today.
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Although not a comedy per se, screenwriter Sorkin milks steady—and often ribald humor—from the situation, relying on colorful characters and a knowing eye for the absurdity of political wrangling. Charlie Wilson was an unmarried, playboy congressman who was known mostly for hard partying and being re-elected five times from a sleepy Texas district. His habit of cavorting with strippers and cocaine kept him constantly on the edge of scandal. But Charlie, a conservative Democrat, was also fiercely patriotic, had a keen mind, and harbored a soft spot for the little guy, whether in his district or in Soviet occupied Afghanistan.
The plight of the Afghan people under Russian occupation had already caught Wilson’s eye by 1980. But it was Joanne Herring (Roberts)—his friend, socialite, political supporter and occasional lover—who convinced Charlie to make Afghanistan’s resistance his cause, arranging a trip for him to see firsthand the conditions of Afghan refugees and the spirit of the Mujahideen (Afghan freedom fighters). When disgruntled CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman) is brought onboard, the three finagle, schmooze and call in favors to fund and arm the Mujahideen. Along the way, they forge unlikely alliances between Israel, Egypt, Syria and others by playing on the self interest of each and their shared desire to see the Soviets repelled. Over time, the cost of the covert “war” waged by Charlie and crew grows from $5 million to $1 billion and results in the Red Army's retreat from Afghanistan.
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Not only does Charlie Wilson’s War reveal a little known chapter in history, but it also offers a fascinating look at how even the most flawed tool can sometimes be used to achieve great ends. One is reminded of the deeply flawed Ulysses S. Grant’s singular success at war or ancient Israel’s hallowed, but flawed, King David. Wilson, Herring and Avrakotos were imperfect vehicles with very different motives who came together for a common, greater goal. Charlie, who always championed the underdog, was deeply moved by the people of Afghanistan and the horrifying conditions of the refugees. Herring, on the other hand, was as devoutly Christian as anti-Communist. She felt it was her Christian duty to oust the “godless” Soviets. And for his part, Avrakotos simply wanted to kill Russians—a far from noble motive.
Finally, almost as postscript, the film looks at the often unforeseen consequences of all human actions, particularly political and military. By backing the Mujahideen, Charlie's covert war shifted the balance of power and set the stage for the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And by botching the “end game” of necessary reconstruction—rebuilding schools, hospitals and infrastructure—they fostered the simmering resentment of the “meddling” west which contributed to the horror of 9-11. The film also forces Americans to consider the consequences of our current military presence in Iraq, and how we, like the Soviets in the 1980s, have caused scores of Iraqis to become refugees—some maimed and left childless or parentless. The cycle of history again feels distressingly familiar. If only we could learn from it
Charlie Wilson War movie review
Most of the recent films we’ve seen about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us what a drag those conflicts are, which may be why so few of us have bothered to go see them. Of course all wars are terrible, but good movies have a way of mitigating that dreary fact even as they acknowledge it. Take the cold war: a “long twilight struggle” (as John F. Kennedy put it) that brought the world to the brink of annihilation and provided a persistent source of tension, anxiety and dread for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Horrible, to be sure. But also kind of a blast.
That, at any rate, is pretty much the gist of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which may be more of a hoot than any picture dealing with the bloody, protracted fight between the Soviet Army and the Afghan mujahedeen has any right to be. As the film observes, that fight, in which the United States semi-secretly armed Muslim anti-imperialist freedom fighters for much of the 1980s, was a prequel to later trouble with anti-Western Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
But let’s not get ahead of the story. Before the blowback, after all, a mighty blow for freedom was struck by a congressman with an alleged fondness for snorting blow. And let’s not be too quick to dismiss the wisdom of his sidekick, a C.I.A. operative with a bad temper and a worse haircut: “If you’re gonna do this, you might as well have fun with it.”
Fun is this movie’s unlikely and persuasive motto. If it’s the best politically themed movie to come around in a while, that may be because the director, Mike Nichols, and the screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, grasp that politics, for all its seriousness, is an essentially comic undertak- ing. Their film is never glib or flippant, but instead shows a lightness of touch and a swiftness of attack — 96 minutes to drink some cocktails, make some deals and send the Russians packing — that stand in welcome contrast to the plodding, somber earnestness of some recent movies I will tactfully refrain from naming.
Not that discretion is necessarily the better part of valor. And it’s hard to imagine a hero as indiscreet as Charlie Wilson, a Democrat who represented Texas’s Second Congressional District in the House of Representatives. Mr. Wilson, who retired from the House in 1996, is played with sly, rascally charisma by Tom Hanks. It is always a pleasure to see Mr. Hanks play against clean-cut type, and here he has the devilish smile of a middle-aged playboy who has woken up in a long-lost guilt-free sequel to “Bachelor Party.”
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An unapologetic womanizer — the type whose lechery seems like a higher form of gallantry — Wilson staffs his office with long-stemmed babes and casually seduces a pious constituent’s daughter (Emily Blunt). He’s a sharp political operator all the same, and also a man of conscience, as his patient, all-seeing assistant (Amy Adams) is pleased to discover.
When we first encounter Wilson, he’s very much in his element: soaking in a Las Vegas hot tub with a Playboy model and a sleazy television producer, among others, his hand wrapped around a glass of Scotch and his mind focused on the consequences of Soviet aggression. God bless America! As understood by Mr. Nichols and Mr. Sorkin, who have filleted George Crile’s fascinating 500-page bestseller into a trim and lively history lesson, Wilson is both an anomaly and a paragon.
A liberal as well as a libertine, he finds common cause (among other satisfactions) with Joanne Herring, a right-wing Houston socialite who loves Jesus and martinis and hates Communism. She is a splendid American contradiction, standing up for liberty and godliness while getting into bed (literally) with a bachelor congressman and (metaphorically) with President Zia (Om Puri), the military ruler of Pakistan.
Julia Roberts, as golden as an Oscar statue, incarnates Ms. Herring as if paying tribute at once to Barbara Stanwyck and to the legions of anonymous Julia Roberts impersonators toiling in drag clubs across the land. I mean this entirely as praise: Not many movie stars have the wit or the moxie to embrace the camp elements of their own personas, and the character is clearly something of a performer in her own right.
The third player in this high-living, hard-partying jihad is Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a C.I.A. operative whose first appearance in Charlie Wilson’s office sends the movie tipping, momentarily and deliciously, into pure door-slamming farce. Gust, whose Greek blood and rust-belt background make him something of a misfit among the blue bloods of the Agency, is as frustrated as Charlie is by the refusal of the United States to arm the Afghan resistance, and so the two of them cook up an elaborate scheme involving Israel, Pakistan, a belly dancer and a compliant House Subcommittee chairman (Ned Beatty).
It’s quite a yarn, and the filmmakers relate it with clarity and verve. The film’s high spirits are inseparable from its sober purpose, which is to present a gentle corrective to the idea that American heroism resides only in square-jawed, melancholy stoicism. That has been the preferred post-9/11 stance, and there is some evident nostalgia in “Charlie Wilson’s War” for the simpler world of the 1980s, when the bad guys flew MIGs and American political life was perhaps a touch less sanctimonious.
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But there is nonetheless a bracing, cheering present-day moral to be found in Charlie Wilson’s story, a reminder that high principles are not incompatible with the pleasure principle. The good guys are the ones who know how to have a good time, and who counter the somber certainties of totalitarianism with the conviction that fun is woven into the fabric of freedom.
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