"Charlie Wilson's War"

Philip Seymour Hoffman utters one of the year's most refreshing lines in this terrific tale of political wheeling and dealing.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Mike Nichols, Reviews

Photo: Universal

Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks in "Charlie Wilson's War."

Dec. 21, 2007 | There's a certain kind of person who likes to see a warm, fuzzy movie at holiday time -- the kind of picture that sends you out of the theater loving all mankind, glowing with the belief that in the end, most people are decent enough to do the right thing for the right reasons. But there are others who seek a different kind of affirmation -- that everything in the world really is a mess, and that most times it's difficult enough to know what the right thing is, much less to have any clue about how to actually get it done. For those people, the first words uttered by Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in "Charlie Wilson's War" will be balm to the soul: "Excuse me, what the fuck?"

No actor this year has had a better opening line, and its unfiltered energy symbolizes everything that's right with Mike Nichols' adaptation of George Crile's highly entertaining 2003 book. "Charlie Wilson's War" is an account of how a playboy Democratic congressman from Texas, a rough-mannered CIA agent and a tony Houston socialite put their heads together to funnel -- in the largest covert operation in history -- a billion dollars in military equipment and aid to Afghanistan in the early to mid-1980s, after the country had been invaded by the Soviet Union.

The last years of the Cold War are fairly recent history; they only seem to have happened eons ago. (In the mirror of hindsight, events are often closer than they appear.) Nichols' movie -- taking its cues from Crile's book, as adapted by Aaron Sorkin -- is a story about political wheeling-and-dealing, and about a rapscallion who set about doing what he believed was the right thing, if for the wrong reasons. Obviously, sending weapons to Afghanistan was one way to fight the Communist threat. On the other hand, there were humane reasons to intervene: What were the Soviets doing dropping bombs on defenseless Afghan villages in the first place? Nichols doesn't turn this story into an essay on political morality; he's more interested in telling the story of a couple of rogue guys (and one rather upscale rogue woman) who put their shoulders to the wheel in the service of their principles. Agreeing with those principles isn't the point; Nichols is more interested in exploring their urge to take action as something quintessentially American.

Tom Hanks plays Wilson, the kind of politico who thinks nothing of sinking into a hot tub with a couple of strippers and a few accompanying snorts of cocaine. Moral watchdogs who like their politicians to be pure will be happy to see that this sort of behavior eventually gets him into trouble. But as Hanks plays Wilson, it's thrilling to see him get away with it. Wilson is the sort of guy who peoples his office with Miss Buxley-type secretaries (he wouldn't have called them administrative assistants): "You can teach 'em to type, but you can't teach 'em how to grow tits" is his motto. He wears his suspenders fastened underneath the epaulettes of his shirts: He may not have class, but he does have a certain noisy élan. Texans are often portrayed as being larger than life (those who come from New Haven by way of Texas don't count), and this movie has two of them: The other is Wilson's sometime paramour, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), a Houston socialite who pours her political ideas right into Wilson's ear, and Roberts plays her with hair piled high and an equally outsize sense of fun. (In one scene, she regales Wilson with her opinions about the ineffectuality of Congress as she gazes into a mirror, separating her freshly mascara'ed lashes with an open safety pin. Please don't try this at home.)

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