Review of Charlie Wilson's War (2007) by Chads. — 28 Apr 2008

Let the horndog be a horndog on his own watch, and he just might surprise you, just like the congressman from Texas in "Charlie Wilson's War". Our former president was a horndog, on his own watch, no doubt(it's not as if the former-White House intern was present at any intelligence briefings), but the mother*****' conservatives wouldn't let it go.

Then we, conservatives and even liberals alike(influenced by the barrage of media coverage), wouldn't let it go, too. But look at the congressman from Texas in "Charlie Wilson's War", whose peccadillos never interfered with his civic-minded faculties.

The blood always knew which way to travel. The filmmaker gets this message across during a comical, but purposeful scene, in which Rep. Wilson(Tom Hanks) shows off his ability to compartmentalize, when he has to deal with a potential personal misconduct scandal, and learn all the nuts and bolts needed to start a covert war, by having separate, intermittent discussions with Bonnie Bach(Amy Adams), his assistant, and Gust Avrakotos(Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a CIA agent, in fire drill fashion.

Point taken. This melange of the personal and the political, nicely compliments the opening scene, in which Wilson watches Dan Rather in Afghanistan from a jacuzzi stocked with bare-chested strippers.

So does "Charlie Wilson's War" inform "Primary Colors"(also by the same filmmaker)? The short answer: yes. Had we allowed the former-president to get his rocks off without incident, maybe, just maybe, we'd be living in a different world today.