I am admittedly a huge Aaron Sorkin fan. His dialog, stories and politics often make for a great mix of high drama and hilarious comedy. He hasn't written for the big screen for a while, and this was his return, so I was incredibly excited. Add to the mix Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks and this movie became one of my five most anticipated movies for the end of the year., if you remember my list a few months back. However, when I saw the running time was only 95 minutes, I began to worry that the movie was just too swiftly edited and maybe there would be important things missing. Then again, maybe the 95 minute running time would just perfect.
Charlie Wilson(Hanks) is a Texas congressman in the 1980s notorious for loving girls, booze and even a little cocaine. He is a nothing congressman from a nothing district and because of that fact his vote seems to always be for sale, which means a lot of people owe him a lot of things. He hires only really hot girls, and the girls all seem to love showing off their bodies in tight clothes. Wilson doesn't seem to care about much, but he is very interested in Afghanistan and their fight against cold war foe, Russia. One day he gets a call from Texas socialite, Johanne Herring(Roberts), who convinces him to come back to Texas and watch a documentary about the war going on. She also sets up for Wilson and his secretary, Bonnie Bach(The delightful Amy Adams) a trip to visit Afghanistan to see what is really going on. Upon returning from an eye opening experience, Wilson wants the C.I.A in his office, and while he wanted a high level C.I.A guy, he gets Gust Avrakotas(Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Gust and 3 other guys make up the entire team trying to covertly help Afghanistan, but with the backing of Wilson and all the I.O.Us he can collect, soon the team has a lot more members and they start to make a real impact. Based in truth, Wilson helped up the covert budget from 5 million dollars to a whopping half a billion dollars. Afghanistan defeated Russia and everyone lives happily ever after. Or as Gust says to Charlie in a very poignant, depressing, make-you-think scene "We'll see."
Shot, edited and scripted at a break neck pace, this movie is picture perfect for the first 70 minutes. The final 20 kind of lag except the closing scene which, while rewritten to avoid law suits, screams at any astute human who has even a remote passing interest in politics. Hanks is very well adept to handling Sorkin's rapid fire, quick witted dialog and while Roberts doesn't actually do much, she is her charming best and works that southern belle perfectly. Yet, the real star of this show is Phillip Seymour Hoffman. As a moustached, no nonsense lover of America, Hoffman works the hell out of the character with a gruff disposition and quick tongue. He deserves an award nomination, and when he is on screen the entire movie lights up. The dialog is funny and almost all of it works and even the stuff that won't have you falling out of your seat with laughter will have you smiling and chuckling. Director, Mike Nichols is an old pro at these political movies, but he doesn't get overly bogged down in the politics of the movie. He lets Sorkin's script speak for itself and he handles the physically comedic scene so well, I felt I was watching an incredibly funny Tom Stoppard play. Unfortunately the biting ending had to be changed due to legal issues, but Sorkin still manages to get a very dark sense out of it and it wraps up America perfectly, I think.
What makes this movie not perfect is what seems like a 15 minute montage of what happens after the war ends. I am not sure how else to go about it and maybe you just forget a good portion of it, although I am not sure the end would pack as much a punch without it. So maybe you just find a better way to do it, but save for those moments, this is one of the funniest, fasted paced movies I have seen all year. It is not a movie for everyone, but anyone with half a brain will love Sorkin's signature dialog and anyone can appreciate Tom Hanks in top form as a man transitioning from a playboy to a very serious politician without losing his sense of fun and his sense of keeping really hot girls around him. The scenes taking place in Afghanistan are little brushed over and I am not sure we get the full emotional connect we could have got from them, but at the least the scenes of war are fast and are only shown to further the story. It is based in truth which makes the whole thing more interesting and scary, to be honest, but it never feels like merely a re-telling of fact. It is so much more than that, so much more.
Final Grade: A-
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