Film review: Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War @ IMDB

Hands up who knew that in Rambo III, Rambo was fighting on the side that would become al-Qaeda? I only mention this because Rambo III was probably the last time the Russian/Afghan war was last seen in a US film.

Until Tom Hanks decided otherwise, that is.

The short version: at the height of the Cold War The Red Army invaded Afghanistan, a long and bloody conflict followed. The US helped to finance the rag-tag Afghan rebels who eventually stalemated the once invincible Soviet war machine. The Russians eventually pulled out and this conflict precipitated the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Find the full version here.

That's all well and good, I hear you say. But what has this got to do with the Hankminator?

Well. The decision to finance the rebels in their conflict is said to have rested with one man, the eponymous Charlie Wilson. Played, naturally, by Tom Hanks.

But this isn't the usual Hanks role. While Wilson was a US Senator who funelled billions of dollars into the conflict, he was also a party man. The film starts with Wilson in a hot tub surrounded by strippers. And Hanks pulls it off, his easy going charm slipping into Wilson like a used glove but given a bit of extra bite.

It wasn't all Wilson's doing, however. Enter Julia Roberts as a wealthy Texan lady who pushes Wilson into intervening in the conflict. Also enter Philip Seymour Hoffman stealing yet another film out from under the main everyone's noses.

Their three performances hold the film together and all of them are flawless.

The film, however, isn't. It's a film of it's times in that it's the US vs The Bad Guys (Russia) and anyone who helps them is good no questions asked. There is very little gray in this film. And this is a story that needs it because this story ends with a plane being flown into a building.

9/11 is the elephant in the room that no one acknowledges, apart from a final denouement that overly relies on the viewer knowing about the fallout of the War. Hoffman comes out with some zen story about how stories never really end, that they roll on and on. But that's not enough.

You could go on like this and tear the film to shreds but I don't feel like it. Because I liked the performances and it was an interesting look at an interesting time.

In a word? Empty.