Media Maven’s Sneak Peek: Charlie Wilson’s War

Last night, I had the unique opportunity to attend the snazzy premiere of the upcoming Universal release, Charlie Wilson’s War.  Before I get to talking about the film, here are some quick highlights of the event itself:

-Could not find a parking space in the Jurassic Parking Lot at Universal City Walk (where the premiere was held), so I parked on the roof and walked down many flights of stairs until I found myself standing in front of the Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant.

-Spoke to Jim Brooks, Mike Nichols, Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Aaron Sorkin (whose table was outside the VIP room, as he did not want to be stuck in a room full of producers during the WGA strike), Richard Lovett, Bryan Lourd and one of the Arab terrorists from the Bayrooz season of 24

-Hugged and kissed Rita Wilson and Julia Roberts

-Spotted Justin Kirk and Amanda Seyfried from across the room

-Ate free lamb chops, lobster bisque, and sliders!

I’d say that about covers it.  Ok, on to the movie stuff.  For those of you who have never heard of Charlie Wilson’s War, here are the important facts: Directed by Nichols and written by Sorkin, the based-on-a-true-story film stars Hanks as the titular Texas congressman who, with some help from Roberts and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, turns the budget for the Afghani war against the U.S.S.R. from $5 million to $1 billion and essentially ends the Cold War.  The movie is well written, well directed and superbly acted…but nothing special.  Allow me to explain:

No matter how high the pedigree of this film may be, it has 2 huge factors working against it.  First of all, this is not a commercial movie.  It’s a political film, as one might expect from the likes of Aaron Sorkin, but without any of the fun trappings or unique interpretations we’ve gotten from other recent political films.  It’s not a political thriller like Munich or The Good Shepard, not an action/drama movie with a political premise like The Manchurian Candidate or The Interpretor, and not an artsy political film like Syriana or Good Night and Good Luck.  Charlie Wilson’s War is simply a movie about politics.  Sounds boring, right?  That’s because for the most part, it is.  The film sticks strictly to the story at hand and feels more like the best History Channel movie of all time, rather than a big budget Hollywood film.  How do you convince millions of Americans to spend their holiday bonuses on an actionless, predictable movie about 1980′s politics when they can go see a Will Smith movie about vampires?

The second big factor working against this film is its structure.  The film opens with one of my favorite narrative techniques, the old “ending of the movie is the first scene and then we go through the whole film until we reach this point again in the actual chronology.”  You know what I’m talking about.  Usually, this technique is used to heighten suspense or confuse viewers by showing them something won’t make any sense until later (my favorite example of this modus operandi is the opening of Amores Perros.  Brilliant).  But with this film, the ending scene they show us is just…um…the ending.  So there goes any suspense the film might have had.  Yes, we all know the Cold War is over, but by putting the ending first, we know that Charlie Wilson isn’t going to fail and so we’re basically stuck watching events unfold.  I think that’s the best way to sum up this film.  Fine acting/directing/etc., but in the end, you’re just watching a bunch of conversations with a few newsreel-esque action shots thrown in towards the end (more on those later).

The actors, as I’ve mentioned, are the terrific, and it is only because of them that this film is worth watching at all.  Tom Hanks is perfect as Charlie Wilson, the intelligent, playful, whisky-loving poltico.  It’s great to see him play a character that’s a bit more suave and jovial than his recent and more famous roles.  Julia Roberts is very good as Joanne Herring, a wealthy Texas socialite who helps push Charlie towards the endgame, though her Southern accent leaves something to be desired.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman is absolutely terrific (is he ever not?) as Gust Avrakotos (one of the best and most ludicrous names ever), a wry, cynical CIA agent who partners up with Charlie.  Hoffman steals every single scene he is in, and though his character is integral to the plot, he serves more as comic relief than anything else.  Definitely one of the top three characters I’ve seen him play.

Lots of other familiar faces pop up throughout the movie.  Emily Blunt (who most of you will remember from The Devil Wears Prada) has like 2 lines, but she has never looked this smoking hot.  Whenever the movie got a bit dull, I only had to think back to her gem of a scene and picture the tan, semi-nude Emily Blunt.  Sigh.  Also appearing are the judge from season one of The Wire, Broadway favorite Dennis O’ Hare, Rachel Nichols from Alias, the always effervescent Amy Adams, the head of admissions guy at Harvard from Legally Blonde, and the aforementioned terrorist from 24 (who also, coincidentally, is in the upcoming film adaptation of The Kite Runner– he was plugging the movie pretty hard to Sorkin at the after party).  This film is very well casted, as every single bit player is good, if not great.

But once you get beyond the likeability of the characters and the strength of the acting, there isn’t much else to grab onto.  The story is one of the least compelling pieces of American history that has ever been brought to the screen.  If I wanted to watch a bunch of politicians have meetings, I’d watch CSPAN.  Moreover, though Sorkin’s dialogue is crisp as always, there’s no real message here.  The end of the film, which is hastily thrown together, introduces a small speck of a possible lesson, but it is quickly abandoned in favor of the end credits.  Again, I think of Munich, which leaves the audience with a dizzying moral conundrum to ponder over the car ride home from the movie theater and beyond.  With Charlie Wilson’s War, you’d be overindulging if your post-viewing conversation lasted longer than your bathroom stop before you exit the cineplex.

Two other things that bugged me: 1. Time jumps.  The movie begins in 1980 and then an hour later, without warning, its 1987.  Huh?  Nothing is different and if there hadn’t been a little flash of “1987″ at the bottom of the screen, I would’ve had no idea any time had passed at all.  Also, there is one particular shot of Charlie Wilson crying in a chair.  This shot is introduced about 60% of the way through the film, though its significance is somewhat unclear.  Then, with about 2 minutes left to go, we get this same shot again, then the final scene.  Maybe I should’ve asked Sorkin to explain it to me because I had no idea where this scene took place, when it was meant to have taken place or what the point of it was.

2. The movie has no real action sequences except for a few shots of Russian helicopters mowing down Afghanis and then vice versa.  But, oddly, Nichols uses real footage from the era to depict these scenes, intercut with some CGI shots to enhance the moment and add some different POV shots.  Try and picture this in your head: You’re rolling along through a talky political movie then bam! you get grainy documentary film footage of a helicopter and then blam! you’re in a POV shot from the cockpit, watching this CGI aircraft kill CGI Afghanis on a CGI mountainside and then snap! back to Tom Hanks drinking a whisky.  What?!  Huh?  Where am I?  The CGI shots were so out of place, only because they followed the terrible quality news footage, which in turn, felt totally out of place.  It’s a safe bet that if the most action-packed shots of the film were shot in 1987, it’s not going to be a very visceral viewing experience.

Let me bottom line it for you: If you are a casual moviegoer, you do not need to see this movie.  You will likely be bored and unimpressed.  You should only see this movie if you a) love Sorkin/Hanks/Hoffman/Nichols/Roberts so much that you need to see everything he/she makes b) you love day-to-day, average politics  c) you really miss the 80′s  d) you like to see every movie that might garner an Oscar nomination (which, due to its pedigree, this film certainly will).  I wish I could be more positive (here’s something: despite it being actionless, I was never very bored.  The acting is too good.), but it’s just not a very special movie.  Sorry, Charlie.

Grade: B-