Charlie Wilson's War belongs to a peculiar subgenre: the
foreign-policy sex comedy. It isn't quite Three's Company Goes To Kabul, but Mike Nichols and Aaron
Sorkin's leering adaptation of George Crile's too-strange-for-fiction
bestseller boasts a lightness of touch that proves both a strength and a
weakness. Thanks in no small part to a flamboyant star turn from Tom Hanks as a
rowdy congressman with a mind for the intricacies of guerrilla warfare and a
bod for sin, it's a whole lot of fun. But it could and should be much more.
Hanks radiates gregarious charm as
the title character, a liberal Texas congressman whose good-ol'-boy exterior
and insatiable appetite for booze and broads hides a brilliant, calculating
mind and a genius for cutting through bureaucracy. While enjoying the company
of strippers in a hot tub one lost evening in Las Vegas, Hanks is stirred by
the plight of Afghan rebels battling a vast Soviet army. With the help of two
unlikely allies—gruff CIA man Philip Seymour Hoffman and wealthy
right-wing social butterfly Julia Roberts—Hanks plays a crucial role in
covertly funding the rebels' long, hard-fought victory against the Communist
superpower.
Crile's book is so sprawling,
colorful, and packed with outlandish incidents and larger-than-life characters
that perhaps only a six-hour miniseries à la Nichols' masterful adaptation of Angels
In America could do
it justice. At 97 minutes, War feels awfully slight, especially since it skips giddily from
the early '80s to the end of the Cold War without covering much ground in
between. The film coasts along breezily on the strength of its leads' charisma
and a clever script full of effervescent wit, but it doesn't have the gravity
to do justice to the blowback and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. arming
Islamic fundamentalists intent on making jihad against secular infidels. War should be a comedy
that becomes a tragedy, yet its tragic undercurrents feel like a hasty
afterthought. In the book, Crile writes that the tall tale of Wilson's
foreign-policy misadventures is both "a rousing good story" and a "cautionary
tale." Nichols succeeds in spinning an entertaining yarn, but the cautionary
aspects feel fatally undernourished.