Charlie Wilson's War - Movie review

Charlie Wilson’s War (R)
If they used this film to teach government in high school every student, make that every straight male student, would enthusiastically seek political office as soon as he became able. This is a film based on a true story about a congressman who makes his mind up to help the Afghans kick the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. Sounds pretty simple when you boil it down to that, probably somewhat wonkish, more than likely more than a little bit boring. Trust me, boring it ain’t.

Even if you can’t tell your three branches of government from your bicameral legislature you can enjoy this congressman at work. Charlie (Tom Hanks) is a great character in the spirit of Harry Gondorf. He gets people to buy things they don’t really understand for people they don’t genuinely care about and like that they’re doing it.

Charlie is a womanizing, drinking, at least occasional cocaine using and very effective congressman. His congressional office staff is made up of attractive young women, nicknamed “Charlie’s Angels,” and one can reasonably conclude that Charlie interviewed each one personally. As one of the Angels explains to a constituent, “Congressman Wilson, he has an expression. He says uhh, ‘You can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to grow tits.’" He summons his staff with one word, “Jailbait!”

Charlie’s allies are Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), the sixth richest woman in Texas and a right-wing Christian, and Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a CIA veteran who has been pushed aside because he doesn’t fit the ivy-league self image of the agency at the time, circa 1980. Joanne prompts Charlie to visit Pakistan to see the plight of the Afghan refugees. When he gets back, he is energized and over the course of the film (a spritely 97 minutes) he gets congress to raise the appropriation for the Afghans from $5-million to $500-million. How does he do it? Two ways.

First, Charlie’s style diverts attention. As Gust put it, “As long as the press sees sex and drugs behind the left hand, you can park a battle carrier behind the right hand and no one’s gonna fuckin’ notice.”

Second, Charlie holds more I-O-U’s than anyone else in congress. He votes for other people’s bills because they ask him to. They vote for his bills because they owe him. And your civics lesson for today is that you can get a lot done on Capitol Hill if people owe you something. The sad part is that once the Afghans drove the Russians out Charlie couldn’t get congress to fund much lesser amounts to rebuild Afghanistan. That allowed the Taliban to take over and we don’t yet know how that all will turn out.

Gust tells the story this way: There's a little boy and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse... and everybody in the village says, "how wonderful. the boy got a horse" And the Zen master says, "we'll see." Two years later the boy falls off the horse, breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, "how terrible." And the Zen master says, "We'll see." Then, a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off and fight... except the boy can't ‘cause his leg’s all messed up, and everybody in the village says, "How wonderful." Now the Zen master says, "We'll see."

See the movie because it’s a good one and fun to watch. Whether you’ll learn something from it, “we’ll see.”