When we meet Rep. Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), he's surrounded by strippers, lounging in a Vegas hot tub; there's booze and cocaine everywhere (though Charlie does abstain from the latter). His office staff is made up exclusively of lovely, busty young women; as one of them explains, "Charlie always says: You can teach 'em to type, but you can't teach 'em to grow tits."
Clearly, Charlie isn't your average member of Congress. He does, however, sit on a few key subcommittees involved in funding covert military operations, so when he realizes that the US is doing next to nothing to help the Afghan rebels who are fighting the Soviet occupation, he does have the clout to change that. He has help from Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a fabulously wealthy Houston socialite, and from Gust Avrokotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a disgruntled CIA agent who runs the Afghan desk.
Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is crisp and zippy, with lots of clever dialogue. The problem is that some political issues cannot be turned into occasions for witty banter without coming across as glib and callous about the actual human suffering involved. War is certainly such an issue, and the tonal and emotional disconnect between the movie's subject matter and its style occasionally makes it difficult to enjoy the punchlines.
That's not to say it's a bad movie; the principal performances are good. It's nice to see Hanks wallowing in sleaze and dissolution for a change, and Hoffman plays cranky impatience and long-suffering frustration very well. Roberts, barely recognizable beneath a Texas accent and a series of atrocious helmet hairdos, is somewhat wasted, and it still feels odd to see her playing matronly types.
The movie ends with the Afghan victory over the Russians, and the absolute lack of Congressional interest (despite Charlie Wilson's urging) in providing any funding for recovery or reconstruction. Nichols and Sorkin do not directly spell out the connection between that failure and the eventual rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but their ending certainly invites us to make that connection, and it's refreshing to see a movie that assumes its audience is smart enough to get the point.
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