This one will be brief, I'm on holidays.
Charlie Wilson's War was an endearing and fun character movie. This is the true story of US congressman Charlie Wilson in the late 70's and early 80's. Charlie isn't your typical congressman as he drinks a lot, sleeps around and dabbles in drugs. Charlie does however care deeply about what's happening in one part of the world other than the US and that is Afghanistan, where the Soviets at the time had invaded the country and were killing Afghan citizens who were horribly underarmed to fight back.
Charlie convinces the decision makers to spend a lot of money on a covert operation to get weapons to the Afghan fighters willing to fight the communist Soviets without the Soviets being able to blame it on the US.
No matter what your opinion is about the history of Afghanistan this is a fascinating story which is well told by one of my favorite writers, Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin's strength is dialogue and the dialogue is performed to perfection by Tom Hanks (Charlie) and Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays the CIA advisor that helps Charlie make all this happen. The often vulgar and always entertaining dialogue between these two made me laugh out loud more than once.
Charlie Wilson's War is definitely on my 'Watch It' list and I give it a value of $8.
July 9, 2008
Charlie Wilson's War - $8
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3 comments:
I enjoyed this one quite a bit but haven't reviewed it yet. I'd say low to mid-70s, maybe a touch higher, so not far off the same score as you really.
you are dead right about the film, although i'm not sure i felt like it would have been quite worth an 8
8 might be a little generous for a movie like this which had a bit of a meandering pace, but I loved the dialogue.
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