Oh, Mike Nichols, where have you gone? Let's just say that after taking the long way round to walk along the river esplanade to get from our house to Lloyd Cinemas on New Year's Day, a large popcorn seemed to be in order.
The popcorn at the movies has this weird palm oil aftertaste even without the butter flavoring -- it's a guilty pleasure nonetheless. As is Charlie Wilson's War. The political or historical aspects of the film are about as accurate as Hairspray. A pleasant, art-directed general telling of some events in the recent past. Let's just enjoy the show.
It is impossible not to be charmed by Tom Hanks in this film. He's truly wonderful. Alas he's Forrest Gump, so he's only going to get so sebaceous, but a little slimier might have worked to his and the film's favor. The real Charlie Wilson was guilty of a DUI hit-and-run. Throwing that in might have added a bit of gravitas to his early morning drinking treated with a wink and a nudge in the film. The scenes with Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman are terrific, especially the high farce where Hoffman dances in and out of Hanks' office while the congressman tries to juggle a personal crisis with a global one. Hoffman has timing like nobody of the past thirty years.
Just as the door opening and closing scene is a joy it's also the thing that keeps this a movie and prevents it from being a film. Nichols and Sorkin consistently choose the facile over the incisive. Which is exactly where Julia Roberts dwells in the narrative. Talk about a missed opportunity. She shows a glimmer in her first scene of the driving force she could be, but that's it. I know many of you are saying, Yeah but she's Julia Roberts, come on! I give her more credit than that. So does Soderbergh. Too bad Nichols doesn't.
The other minor tragedy of this film is that Ned Beatty is treated like a buffoon. Another thing that underscores just how wrong this movie goes once you get beyond its veneer. In the end it almost becomes some sort of mash-up of Top Gun, Springtime for Hitler and a Unicef commercial.
Ciao,
Signore Direttore
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