Saw the film yesterday. My general impression was most of the stupidity was during the Carter administration. The early part of the movie with all the exposition of the government's foibles can be laid at the foot of Carter. The writer uses the CIA agent (great performance by Phillip Seymore Hoffman, very funny) at the end to say that we traded one evil, the soviets, for the unknown evil of fundamentalist moslems.
I didn't think this was as heavy handed as West Wing, and we both found the movie entertaining and interesting since we've been reading it was close to actual story.
Excerpt - Possible right-wing fantasy about Hollywood: A year ago, the lockstep liberals who run the movie studios received a directive from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ordering them to finally make some films about the Iraq-Afghanistan catastrophe. The moguls dutifully complied, bankrolling top directors and Oscar-winning stars to make serious, worthy films eviscerating the Bush Administration's war policy. The laugh, for the right wing, (a.k.a. The Intelligent Majority - TAB) is that nobody went to see these movies. In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, Lions for Lambs, Redacted — together, in their entire theatrical runs, they earned only about what Will Smith's I Am Legend did on one day last weekend. Even if you throw in Jamie Foxx's Saudi Arabia-set action epic The Kingdom, the total box office take of the war-on-terror films doesn't match the earnings of, say, Fahrenheit 9/11.
Okay, there was no Democrat politburo instructing Hollywood to make anti-war movies — at least, not that I know of. And not every showbiz liberal agreed that the jihadist insurgency should be indicated with a finger that was wagging, pointing or raised. Some of them — Tom Hanks, writer Aaron Sorkin, director Mike Nichols — thought they should do what they do best: turn it all into comedy. The result, Charlie Wilson's War, is that seemingly impossible object these days: a picture about war and politics that has manages to be both rational and inspirational. It is also the year's funniest smart movie.
Companion Time Magazine Article
Charlie Wilson Regrets Nothing
By Sandra McElwaine - Thursday, Dec. 06, 2007
@ @ @ @
Charlie Wilson's War, Pro Iraq?
The Conservative Voice by Randall DeSoto
December 20, 2007
For everyone who’s believed that Hollywood can only put films with strong anti-war, anti-conservative messages now-a-days (Valley of Elah, Rendition, Lions for Lambs), Charlie Wilson’s War will encourage your faith that Tinseltown can tell the other side too. I went to a screening of Wilson’s War in Los Angeles earlier this week, after which the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (of West Wing/American President fame) participated in a Q&A with the audience. I assumed going into the movie that somehow there was going to have to be at least some slight positive wink to the United States’ role in helping to cause the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the late ‘80s. The American support of the Afghani Mujahedin fighters in their struggle was arguably the most successful covert war operation in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised to find, far from giving just the slight wink, quite the opposite was true. The movie must be seen as pro-war, when the cause is right, and certainly pro staying until the task is done, which has application in our current fight in Iraq.
This theme of not just winning the war, but winning the peace came through strongly at the end of the movie. I believe many in the audience (of over 300) probably were shocked that such a message could be put out by a major Hollywood studio (Universal) at this time. The film in fact closes with the words of Charlie Wilson, the Blue Dog Democrat from Texas who procured funding for the war on Capitol Hill and championed the Afghanis’ cause. “These things [regarding the victory in Afghanistan] happened and these were glorious and they changed the world…and then we [expletive] up the endgame.” The film makes clear, the main problem with our effort in Afghanistan in the 80's, was that we didn’t follow through and help stabilize and rebuild the country, so radical elements were able to come in and take over. During the Q&A after the film, a member of the audience asked Aaron Sorkin somewhat incredulously about this message. (I wrote the interchange down after the event and think that I have captured it word-for word, and definitely the points made by each.) The audience member said, “I believe that one of the main themes of the movie is, that the United States is good at winning wars and then we pull out before the job is done. Is that that right?” Sorkin responded, “Yes, that’s right. That’s a main theme of the movie.” The questioner followed up more hesitantly, “Well, doesn’t that fly in the face of the popular opinion in the country about the Iraq War right now?” Sorkin responded, “Yes, it does.” He then qualified his answer slightly saying the situation was complicated and things in Iraq didn’t seem to have turned out well, but really didn’t back down from his initial response.
This is Aaron Sorkin! The creator and show-runner for West Wing. Writer of The American President. That show and that movie pilloried Republicans and their conservative views on a regular basis. Yet in this current movie, the main heroes are Charlie Wilson--right of center, played by Tom Hanks; Joanne Herring—a far right of center Texas socialite and self-professed born-again Christian woman (albeit with questionable sexual mores in light of her profession) who gets Wilson involved with the Afghanis’ cause, played by Julia Roberts; and Gust Avrakotos, a communist-hating CIA agent, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Herring’s main motivations for getting involved in the Afghani fight are both for humanitarian purposes and to defeat the communists in their bid to dominate the Middle East. Her views are presented in favorable light, and therefore must be the right reasons to go to war. President Bush offered the same justifications for going into Iraq (in addition to preventing Saddam from acquiring weapons of mass destruction), though the enemy in this case were terrorists rather than the Soviets. Additionally, in many ways, both the United States invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, can be understood as getting the endgame right from mistakes made in the late 80’s and 90’s, thus righting what Wilson said we did wrong before. Further building the case that this movie can be seen as sympathetic to current Republican-led actions in these two countries is that Congressman Jack Murtha’s ethics problems that he experienced in the early 80’s come up twice during the film.
The main critique, from a conservative standpoint, is that Ronald Reagan’s role in supporting the Mujahedin fighters is all but ignored, minus a picture of him being prominently shown in the background during a scene and a mention of a Republican President being in power at the time. If we in the audience saw these connections to our current military efforts initiated by a Republican President, and Sorkin acknowledged as much, the correspondents who make up the Hollywood Foreign Press could make the same intellectual leap too, and they nominated the movie for five Golden Globes including: Best Picture, Best Screenplay (for Sorkin), and best actor nods for Hanks, Roberts, and Hoffman. All these actors are previous Oscar® winners. Sorkin has won numerous Emmys®. The film’s director, Mike Nichols won an Oscar® for The Graduate in 1967. It doesn’t get any more Hollywood establishment then these people, and they all signed on to do this project and obviously delivered solid performances.
On balance, Charlie Wilson’s War can be viewed as the first big budget, studio film to place our current military actions in a positive light in a long time. So much for completely writing Hollywood off.
Randall DeSoto is a freelance writer and author of the new book We Hold These Truths, which addresses how leaders have appealed to beliefs found in the Declaration of Independence throughout our nation's history. It is available through Xulon Press and Amazon.com and soon bookstores nationwide.
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/29855.html
Posted by TAB/MAR