Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
DVD (region 4)
d. Mike Nichols; pr. Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks; scr. Aaron Sorkin; book. George Crile; ph. Stephen Goldblatt; m. James newton howard; ed. John Bloom, Antonia Van Drimmelen; cast. Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Amy Adams (102 mins)
The CIA manufacture of a proxy war to fight the Soviets forms the backdrop for a captivating look at how one US Congressman turned the Afghanistan War into a covert US military operation which saw the demise of the Soviet Union and arguably, in the CIA sponsorship of the mujahedeen, the origins of the current War on Terror is the historical perspective underlying Charlie Wilson’s War. This sly funny political bio-pic follows the title character’s outraged humanity upon visiting the remote Peshawar region of Pakistan, which had seen an influx of Afghan refugees following the Soviet invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan, through to his organizing a covert war which eventually saw the Soviets leave in defeat from Afghanistan; and the arrival of the Taliban.
The knowledge that this would eventually lead to 9-11 rings through in a quote from Wilson: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we fucked up the end game.” Director Mike Nichols celebrates Wilson’s idealism in seeing the end of the Cold War but the film is tempered with the realization of what was to come after in American politics in the Bush years. Hence, Charlie Wilson’s War depicts the complex political machinations needed to get an Israeli Arms Dealer with links to Mossad to join the CIA, Pakistan and Egypt in a campaign to arm muslims with state of the art weaponry.
Wilson is in a hot tub with strippers, a decision that would result in a scandal this film documents with due irony, when he sees reporter Dan Rather say that the mujahedeen are fighting a “Holy War” against the Soviets and all they need is arms and supoort. Nichols makes no other mention of the Jihadist Holy War mentality of the mujahedeen, however he does suggest that religion, specifically the appeals to Christian American politicians to fund the covert war and the spin given to such as a war of good against evil was a regrettable political necessity. Given that President Bush would prefigure his declaration of the War on Terror with allusions to a “crusade”, the acknowledgement of the influence of religion is handled with subtlety by director Mike Nichols: the point simmers throughout the film however.
Mike Nichols is a skilled satirist. Under his direction, Tom Hanks plays the title character in Charlie Wilson’s War as a womanizing Congressman who doubles the covert operations budget the day after bathing with strippers and having just been appointed to a congressional ethics committee. Soon he is prompted back into Cold War idealism when confronted with evidence of the Soviet inhumanity in invading Iraq and Hanks teams with a disgruntled veteran Cold Warrior (Philip Seymour Hoffman in a droll performance) to finally end it in Afghanistan. Their humanity, idealism and dedication invest Charlie Wilson’s War with an incisive irony that questions the association between morality and ethics in American politic, topics Nichols touched on in his indirect reference to the Presidency of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors.
Witty, as Nichols could generally be relied on to be since first galvanizing American film with The Graduate and Catch 22, the film’s political perspective makes Charlie Wilson’s War an insightful and clever reflection on the origins of the War on Terror in the end of the Cold War: subtle rather than polemic.
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