Sex! Drugs! (And Maybe a Little War) Charlie Wilson's War

[EV_Ares]

IT sounds like a surefire hit for the Christmas movie season: bosomy showgirls snorting cocaine in a Las Vegas hot tub. A rowdy, Scotch-guzzling hedonist splashing in there with them. Oh, he’s also a congressman. Then there’s a rogue C.I.A. operative. Big names on the marquee: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman. All this, and the story is true. The problem isn’t the sex-and-drugs part, but that “Charlie Wilson’s War” is also about Afghanistan, military spending bills and kids with their arms blown off. A mere whiff of more depressing headlines out of the Middle East may be enough to drive some people home to watch a DVD of the Yule log.

“Charlie Wilson’s War” is not as didactic as many of the others and is set in a pre-9/11 world. Based on the late George Crile’s best seller, it is about a square-jawed Democratic congressman from Texas who used his seat on a military appropriations subcommittee during the 1980s to secretly steer more than a billion dollars to finance the mujahadeen rebellion in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet army.

(Speaking of skirt chasing, Mr. Nichols’s wife, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, dated Mr. Wilson decades ago. “They had dinner twice and she said: ‘He was crazy. I was scared,’” Mr. Nichols said. “I mean, she’d gone to Wellesley. Henry Kissinger was speedy for her.”)

Yet for all the horror, Mr. Sorkin, Mr. Nichols and Mr. Hanks — each a liberal Democrat — insist that their creation is, of all things, more a comedy than a political movie. “It’s a serious comedy,” Mr. Hanks said. “Funny stuff happens right next to horribly tragic stuff.” But how can anyone not think of Iraq? Mr. Wilson helped create a vacuum that was filled by the Taliban and Islamic extremists who later played a part in the terror of Sept. 11. In the movie, the blame for the Islamic ascendancy is not placed on the support for the Afghani warlords, but on the United States’ failure to maintain its aid to Afghanistan after the Soviet retreat.
And what is the audience supposed to think when this quotation from Mr. Wilson pops on the screen at the very end? “We change the world and then we leave” and mess up — the actual quote is saltier — “the endgame.”

And there are two references about how a government prosecutor at the time — the current Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani — tried to bring down Mr. Wilson on drug charges.It wasn’t a political gesture,” Mr. Sorkin said. “Honest to God, I wasn’t trying to put a thin mustache on Giuliani. I guess the fact that Giuliani was linked in this investigation, I thought if I could just toss it in, it’s an enjoyable reminder that this is a true story.” Insisting that the movie was not pushing a political point, he added: “This isn’t a sales job. I feel I’d be spraying Cheez Whiz on it by laying on top of it my own unsophisticated political views.”

Mr. Hanks, for one, is primed for any onslaught. “The Wall Street Journal and the like will come out, and they’ll criticize it or savage it, because we’re all a bunch of Democrats who are taking potshots at the war in Iraq,” Mr. Hanks said. “And the other side will say: ‘Boy, I wish we had politicians like Charlie Wilson in office now. I’ll trade in hard drinking for getting things done.’”

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/movies/16berk.html?pagewanted=1

[blogslut]

1. I wanna see this one

I'll probably have to wait for the DVD though. Films like that don't play in my one-theater town.

[Enrique]

2. the book glamorized Wilson and his CIA friend

from what I've read about the movie, it does it even more than the book.

[MadLinguist]

3. I read "Charlie Wilson's War"

I found it jingoistic, and revisionist. And it sure did lay on the glory butter real thick for Charlie and his spook boy Friday. Out of all the spy's insider view of American foreign policy books to be published in the past decade or so, it absolutely figures that it would be this piece of tripe with maple frosting on it that makes it through the Hollywood maze. Robert Baer's stuff, not a chance.

[pretzel4gore]

4. the Soviets were good for Afghanistan

the 'bull in chinashop' act might thrill those who enjoy schoolbus head-ons, but fax is fax! Pre 911, an interview heard on CBC radio of a british journalist who had gotten close to the muhajadeen, and said that a muhajadeen leader told him they wanted the Soviets out so they could 'put the women back in place'....it was EVIL, pure and simple, and hell awaits everyone involved in destroying Afghanistan (the USSR had 'invaded' at request of the Afghanistan government, and fought alongside government troops. It was this that the US created terrorists drove out and under).
Shame
(in Albert Speer's post prison book, Speer described seeing homeless peasants fleeing fighting in East Europe and the contempt he had for them- years later, he said his heart broke when he recalled their faces!)
charlie wilson was a greasy whore

[wtmusic]

6. Wow. There's a history rewrite.

The families of the 2 million civs killed, or maimedby landmines (many dropped from helicopters and disguised to look like toys so kids would pick them up) might disagree with you. As well as anyone with a cursory knowledge of Afghan history.

"The result of the fighting was that the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had escaped to take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum thereby coming into existence. Fighting continued among the victorious Mujahideen factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The most serious fighting during this period occurred in 1994, when over 10,000 people were killed in Kabul alone. The chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in turn spawned the rise of the Taliban."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan

[pretzel4gore]

7. what about charlie wilson?

that's what wilson did: throw fuel on the fires, in order to cause chaos. Ever heard of 'the great game'? And accusing the Soviets of dropping anti personnel mines made to look like toys (which the US has recently been caught doing in Iraq) is pure fabrication- what the hell reason would the Russians and Afghanis have for causing mayhem among their own people? You say 'rewrite history' but do you remember that Afghanistan was a hippie heaven back in the 70's? And...What was wrong with central asian regional power USSR playing role in a neighboring state's struggle to resist extremist religious and 'great gamers' anyhow? Had no western funds gone to muhajadeen, and the 1979 gov. survived, what harm to the west would that have caused? And remember, in reagan years, every few days there were snips in our newspapers saying 'Islamic terrorists murder townsfolk' etc in Algeria/Morocco etc. Yet that news never got any attention, though 100 thousand Algerians were murdered (often just for listening to music, or wearing jeans etc) The rightwing WINS ALL its arguments by blatant bs'ing...i read those snippets in the 80's and 90's and hated the killing pigs- who it turns out were funded by western govs all the time! Just weeks before the invasion of Afghanistan, $43 million was given to the Taliban; remember that?
otoh, bush is god and we better worship him, or we'll die....

[Lost4words]

5. I cant even watch the GD promos for the garbage!

The very last thing I want to see is a falendering drunk polotician cheating his way to his objectives. Tom Hanks, democrat or not can go F* himself, he has been no help to anyone except his plastic surgen.

this film is pure puke IMHO!

I'll watch Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and dream of ligitamate government!

Tom Hanks does his best work in womens clothes.

Yuck Yuck Yuck!!