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April 2008
DVD REVIEW Charlie Wilson's War

By Wilson Morales

DVD REVIEW
Charlie Wilson's War


 

Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ned Beatty
Director: Mike Nichols
Format: Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Subtitles: English, French, Spanish
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 1
Rating: R
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Release Date: April 22, 2008
Run Time: 102 minutes

   

 

DVD Revisits Exploits of Texas Congressman Who Single-Handedly Toppled the Soviet Union

Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), who served from 1973 to 1996, is apparently an unsung hero responsible for toppling the Soviet Union virtually single-handedly. For it was through his funding of a covert CIA operation in response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that the mujahedeen managed to defend themselves successfully while simultaneously bankrupting the U.S.S.R.

What is ironic is that Wilson, the architect of the operation, was not only a liberal Democrat, but a loose cannon who didn’t let the fact that he was married get in he way of his flagrant boozing and womanizing. Among his many mistresses was a wealthy socialite named Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), and their lustful liaison was proof of the age-old maxim that politics makes strange bedfellows, literally and figuratively.

She was a conservative, Christian fundamentalist who pressured her boy-toy to get the CIA to intervene in the conflict in the name of freedom of religion. What neither of them anticipated, however, was that in the process of sending the Soviets to defeat they would be creating a new monster, a militarily-equipped radical Islam.

This is the arc of Charlie Wilson's War, a relatively lighthearted romp about a real-life James Bond. The movie was adapted from the best-selling biography of the same name by legendary director Mike Nichols who had no reservations about depicting his protagonist’s depraved side, such as an occasion when we find Charlie cavorting naked in a hot tub with coke-snorting strippers.

Unless somebody’s taking liberties with the truth here, history will one day confirm that all it took to bring an end to the Cold War was the valiant efforts of a party animal who knew his way around Washington well-enough to be unburdened by red tape, bureaucrats or democracy. Charlie Wilson, a real American hero, belatedly revealed.