Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen Edition)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Amy Adams, Julia Roberts, Ned Beatty, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom HanksBrand: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOME ENTERTAIN.
Cinematographer: Stephen Goldblatt
Cinematographer: Antonia Van Drimmelen
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Arabic (Original Language); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Russian (Original Language); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 102 minutes
Published: 2008-04-01
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-22
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: YOU CAN'T FOOL ME
Summary: 5 Stars
Let's get this out of the way off the top: I loved Charlie Wilson's War. It was patriotic, funny, sexy, well-acted and great drama. Fabulous movie. Five stars. Kudos. Love it.
That said, just wanted to let it be known that the message of this film, at least one of the sub-texts of it, did not get past me. It was made by a liberal and meant to espouse a Democrat agenda.
Hollywood is not about to make conservative movies now or in the future. Charlie Wilson's War looks like a conservative movie at first, but watch closely and you will see it is something else. Yes, it is about how America, led by the CIA under the Reagan Administration, helped bring Communism, at least the Soviet variety, to its knees and end the Cold War in victory for the U.S. Hooray.
Hollywood is about promoting Democrats and down-grading Republicans. Take for instance the recent spy thriller Breach. Since the beginning of time it seems, every spy who committed treason against America and the West was a Left-wing radical or sympathizer. Hundres of spies over decades of time. Alger Hiss, Kim Philby, Franklin's Roosevelt aides, the Rosenbergs; the list is long. What is not long is the number of movies about them. Those movies virtually do not exist. Instead they get lying portrayals of Joe McCarthy accusing innocent Jews and Democrats. After the Venona archives opened in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s we discovered that many of those accused actually were Communists and spies. The poor, disgraced filmmakers, instead of living in abject poverty caused by mean conservatives, more often than not moved to the French Riviera or Cote d'Azur and made avante garde European movies with Luc Goddard. Such imprisonment!
Then along comes Breach. Holy cow, after 200 or 400 consecutive liberal spies, none of whom seemingly by law or mandate are allowed to be portrayed on screen, Breach highlights the single conservative, Catholic man ever found top be a spy. Good movie but you can't fool me.
Now comes Charlie Wilson's War by Left-wing screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President, The Left, er, West Wing). Like A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War was honest enough that it almost killed Sorkin's liberal message in a stream of conservative triumph. Patton was a similar movie, originally planned to portray the general as a war-mongering lunatic, except that America fell in love with the idea of beating Nazi Germany and George C. Scott's portrayal of the maverick hero.
Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks, was a Texas Democrat. The kind, which the movie does not tell us, who became a Republican when they saw how disgraceful the Democrats had become. A patriotic cDemocrat, which unfortunatly is an exception to the rule.
The movie would have you believe that Wilson worked against the Reagan Administration to fund and lead the Afghan resistance that ended the Soviet empire. Then it would you believe that Wilson alone warned Reagan that unless they funded schools and cultural life, "crazies" like Osama bin Laden would make us rue the day later.
Wilson deserves credit and he found some resistance here and there, but the idea that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War in Afghanistan kicking and screaming against his own policies is, well, not true. His CIA chief, Bill Casey, was wildly enthusiastic about the Afghan operation. I'll give Wilson his credit; the credit Sorkin never gives to Reagan and Casey.
Watch the little messages in the movie: Wilson tells Julia Roberts (who plays a conservative matron and never looked better in the process), "I'm a liberal." He's about as liberal as Tom DeLay. He also tells her she owes him because she "helped me out with the pro lifers," which of course is Sorkin's way of getting his vote in favor of abortion.
But the most obvious stuff concerns Charlie's drinking, drugging and womanizing. He does good things, the movie informs us, and should not be held back by indiscretions and immoralities. Who is this supposed to remind us of? Bill Clinton, who was out there making the economy hum, keeping abortion legal, doing "good work" while those evil Republicans fought him at every turn. Lying, cocaine use, drunkenness; who cares?
Sorkin gets a knock in at Rudy Giuliani. The movie was made in 2007 when Rudy was a front-runner for the 2008 GOP nomination which he eventually failed to capture. They also make sure to place forth the fiction that Congressman John Murtha was "clean." This was obviously an attempt by the filmmakers to apologize for the Democrat who opened his mouth and uttered the fiction that American soldiers were like Nazis in Iraq.
Hey, loved Charlie Wilson's War, but it did not get past my antennae.
Summary of Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen Edition)
Academy Award® winners Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman star in this compelling and witty film from Oscar®-winning director Mike Nichols and Primetime Emmy®-winning writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing). Based on the outrageous true story, Charlie Wilson's War shows how one congressman who loved a good time, one Houston socialite who loved a good cause and one renegade CIA agent who loved a good fight conspired to bring about the largest covert operation in history.Similar DVD Movies
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