Review of W. (2008) by Chads. — 18 Oct 2008
The 1985-1986 season of "Saturday Night Live" was highlighted by the appearance of director Francis Ford Coppola. This hallowed institution of sketch comedy, which reacts to the news satirically on a weekly basis, has been sending-up presidents since the show's inception in the mid-seventies, beginning with Chevy Chase's take on Gerald Ford, the klutzy one.
W. is the dumb one, and Will Ferrell played this angle to the hilt during the sitting president's first term. Josh Brolin, on the other hand, plays the Bush family's black sheep(shades of Elia Kazan's "East of Eden") as the baffled one.
That is what's ultimately disappointing about "W.", because didn't Chris Cooper already corner the market on this characterization in John Sayles' "Silver City"? Some of us, liberals, and more than a few conservatives alike, looked to this filmmaker to provide an outlet for the country's anger at the ongoing war and calamitous financial situation.
The last thing we expected, or wanted, was an even-handed portrayal that's counterintuitive to Michael Moore's perception of our current commander-in-chief. It's a well-documented fact that the Bush family is synonymous with oil, and yet, a cabinet meeting that lays out the strategy for the impending invasion of Iraq, presents "W.
" as a babe in the woods who seems oblivious to the cross purposes of the country's official agenda, which is to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein. The "weapons of mass destruction" snafu? That's obviously tied to oil interests, a fiction created to line the pockets of industrialists with blood-soaked money, so it follows that W.
wasn't part of the conspiracy to break the rules of engagement. Especially during these intelligence briefings, "W." strongly recalls "Saturday Night Live", since all the president's men(and one woman) are all too contemporary and overfamiliar to the people they serve.
We need to laugh, so we don't cry, and that's the film's failing. We just stare at them numbly with shock and awe.
This review of W. (2008) was written by Chads. on 18 Oct 2008.
W. has generally received mixed reviews.
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