Charlie Wilson’s War Movie Download

8 / 10

Before the Taliban
Before Afghanistan was known as the home of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, they were fighting a bloody war against the Russians. And they were losing. Bad.

So, how did a major motion picture get made about an obscure congressman named Charlie Wilson who’s so unknown he has to google himself to know who he is? When you watch this film you see that it was something that needed to be made–not to make the world aware of Charlie Wilson necessarily, but to make the world aware of a decade in which Afghanistan was being mercilessly obliterated by Russia and how the tables turned.

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) was a hedonistic congressman representing a small part of Texas. In the grand scale of things he was barely a blip on the radar, but he was on the subcommittee for covert defense spending, and that made him a bit of a somebody. When he arbitrarily doubled the CIA’s covert budget from $5 million to $10 million he became just a little more important. It was then that he was made aware of the Soviet Union’s actions in Afghanistan by a wealthy, ultra-right wing, religious woman named Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts). She had the kind of money, clout, and sexual prowess to gently nudge Charlie Wilson toward supporting a cause she passionately believed in.

“Charlie Wilson’s War” started out kind of sleazy and despicable. After twenty minutes I was beginning to ask myself why should I be watching a womanizing lush congressman; even if he is played by Tom Hanks. The gears caught and the movie gained traction once Wilson met with the president of Pakistan, President Zia (Om Puri). The movie became a speeding locomotive when Wilson met with CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Hanks and Hoffman on screen together was fantastic. Even when their banter morphed into political and military jargon I didn’t completely follow I still was entranced.

Like any movie about politics and/or war, your pleasure or displeasure with the movie will have a lot to do with your own politics. I happen to believe that America’s covert intervention to arm helpless Afghans against a genocidal bully was a commendable move and seeing a movie about such a move is nice. Of course, it helps if the movie is done well, which this was.Read More