Charlie Wilson's War

Mike Nichols' new film opens on a ceremony honouring a Texas congressman for his role in liberating Afghanistan and bringing down the USSR. Chances are, you've never heard of him. (I know I hadn't.)

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is a strange sort of hero, a far cry from the innocent idealists you find in everything from Mr Smith Goes To Washington to Evan Almighty. A Democrat with a small but safe constituency, he begins the 80s like the 70s never ended: partaking of playmates, booze and drugs. They don't call him "Good Time Charlie" for nothing.

Still, Wilson has an interest in foreign policy and a seat on the important Defense Appropriations sub-committee. Off the cuff, we see him ascertain that the US is offering annual aid of $5 million to the mujahideen and he orders it doubled. And just like that it's done.

Joanne Herring (a blonde and miscast Julia Roberts) seizes on this impulse. She's the sixth richest woman in Texas (nothing to be sneezed at), and probably the most evangelical anti-Communist in the State. She enlists Charlie in the cause and organizes a face-to-face meeting with the President of Pakistan, who is much dismayed by the swelling numbers of refugees entering his country. Wilson sees for himself, and he decides to do something about it.

This probably sounds rather dry, but not a bit of it is. Go back far enough you'll find that before he started signing off on hit-and-miss movies like Closer and The Birdcage, Mike Nichols was a satirical comedian, and his approach to this under-exposed chunk of late Cold War history is firmly in that comic register. (He also directed the WWII black comedy Catch-22).

See, politics doesn't have to be boring. Not if you're as politically incorrect as Charlie Wilson was. A pragmatist who surrounds himself with a bevy of beautiful secretaries ("You can teach 'em to type, but you can't teach 'em to grow tits"), he's not one to worry about the difficulties of bringing together the Israelis and the Saudis in common cause. If a foreign minister is partial to belly-dancing, well, Charlie can work with that�

The movie gets its biggest buzz from a bravura turn by Philip Seymour Hoffman as unconventional CIA agent Gust Avrakotos. With his dark glasses and bushy moustache, Gust seems to have adopted a permanent disguise, but it turns out he's incapable of bullshit. When we first see him, he underlines a complaint by taking a hammer to his supervisor's glass office.

The film's funniest scene is pure French farce, an echo chamber of slamming doors as the congressman juggles a breaking ethics probe (led by one Rudy Giuliani) while Gust gives him the inside dope on covert ops.

It's curious casting, but the normally squeaky clean Hanks brings a certain well-worn sophistication - and impeccable timing - to Charlie's roguish ways. "Why does congress say one thing and do nothing?" demands a fired up Roberts. Hanks lets it sit there a beat. "Tradition, mostly." Credit West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin for the sly script, a sharp distillation of a heavyweight non-fiction book by George Crile.

Whenever the movie drops that slightly glib, worldly-wise, ironic stance it threatens to get embarrassing: the teary prologue (which is also an epilogue) is a case in point; but also later scenes of Afghan warlords shooting down Soviet jet planes, which might as well be outtakes from the last Rambo picture.

Nichols, Sorkin and Hanks are famous Hollywood liberals, but you wouldn't know it from what amounts to an indulgent wink at some pretty dubious backroom dealing. Nor do they come up with a persuasive disclaimer regarding the unlooked for after-effects of arming the mujahideen (like, 9/11, for example.) There's a smarter, more acidic satire in here that would have no need for such a disclaimer, but Nichols & Co have hedged their bets and fudged the issue. This is such a witty, entertaining and sophisticated film - it's a pity it has to pull its punches.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com