...my second Holiday movie, is even better than the first. It centers around the cause-based friendship between two smart, generous, and very manly men--Charlie Wilson (played by Tom Hanks) and a dissident CIA agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman). It’s such a great Cold War story that unstintingly presents the Soviets as cruel, murderous evildoers and properly highlights the importance of the brilliant success of a covert operation of unprecedented funding that it would hardly be right to quibble about its accuracy in every respect. That some of the problems we face now can be traced to our failure to finish the job then is surely true, and the irony that our initial intervention in Afghanistan was, in part, understood to be a humanitarian defense of religous freedom shouldn’t be forgotten. (The suggestions that 9/11 was caused by our indifference to Afghanistan after the fall of communism is ridiculous, though.) Democratic Congressman Charlie Wilson was surely a wonderful and indispensable cause of the Soviets suffering their first and, it turns out, decisive defeat. But the regime change ushered in by President Reagan is conspicuous by its absence in the film.
Should we have expected any different?
Given what I have read about this movie, I wonder what Hollywood's purpose was in making it. The real question is not what clued-in conservatives will take from the film, but what relatively clueless average folks will take from it. I suspect these are two separate questions. If, for example, Wilson is presented as the cause of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, with no real role for the Reagan administration, that would be wrong. The Sept. 11 angle at the end, as reported, is also disturbing. I am increasingly unwilling to bet 10 bucks that Hollywood has made a good political movie (something I suspect it is simply incapable of doing anymore), or indeed any movie, geared to an adult mentality, that doesn't in some way advance liberal stereotypes.
It sounds like such a good story. The "dissident CIA agent" is a stock Hollywood character. Isn't it funny that it plays this way? The connection to the Reagan Administration would undercut that "dissident" idea. Also, the neglect of Afghanistan - what were we going to do there? And under which president's watch was nothing done?
You people ought to think of this film like Robert Altman's "M.A.S.H." The narrative material is about one war, but it's supposed to remind you of the war we're in now. The point of the film was to show the dichotomy between Wilson's lifestyle and his ability to get things done in Afghanistan. That, to me, seems like a critique of the current administration's action in Iraq. Wilson was going to parties in Las Vegas and snorting cocaine on the weekend, and during the week he was orchestrating a covert war in the Middle East. George Bush and Dick Cheney are the opposite morally, but can't make their vision happen with the same kind of success.
It's hard to believe that this movie is glorifying Terrorism, Covert Wars, Illegal Drug Use, Corrupt Politicians and the Breaking of International Laws all at once....but it just might be.
By reading Rotten Tomatoes.com one will read "Charlie's partner in this uphill endeavor is CIA Agent Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman), a blue-collar operative in a company of Ivy League blue bloods. Together, the three of them--Charlie, Joanne and Gust--travel the world to form unlikely alliances among the Pakistanis, Israelis, Egyptians, arms dealers, law makers and a belly dancer."
But you don't read about Tom Hanks and Julia's characters recruiting a Saudi Arabian man to lead their joint venture, by the name of Osama Bin Laden.
If America has forgotten so quickly, go back and read about a leader of the Afghani Resistance against the Russians. Yep, Charlie Wilson helped train, educate and fund Osama Bin Laden...and look what Osama Bin Laden has done since Charlie Wilson found him.
You would think that Hollywood and anyone with a brain would rather educate people. Glorifying Charlie Wilson, Osama Bin Laden and Joanne Herring is wrong. Many people don't know that Joanne Herring is part of the Johnson Family that owns Kellogg, Brown and Root and DynCorp Private Contracting Groups. Who would have thought huh?
My advice, read about these scum in books or on-line. By the way, the book Charlie Wilson’s War is rather dry and isn‘t worth the paper its written on if you asked me, but you get an idea of what went on during that time period.
My Advice, don't watch movies that glorify Terrorism and the people who get rich off Wars against Terrorism. Those who seek to impose their own ideology and want nothing else but to be powerful should rott in hell.
Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth.