Movie review: Charlie Wilson’s War

I’ll be honest, when I sat with my in-laws and wife this week and put in my two cents worth about what we should see, I didn’t want to see Charlie Wilson’s War.

I am Legend, Walk Hard, Sweeney Todd … all of those movies came to mind first. Sure, I’m a fan of Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymore Hoffman, but “political comedy” just didn’t put me in the holiday movie-going spirit.

When it was all said and done after this movie, which I actually felt was much too short, I have to say I liked it. Charlie Wilson’s War is funny, it’s interesting and it’s well acted by Hanks, Hoffman and Amy Adams. I could have done without Julia Roberts’ character, but I say that about most movies she’s in, anyway.

If you want the nuts and bolts of the plot, I recommend you read a real review from The Herald’s Neil Morris, who goes into much better detail of what this movie’s about (he gave it an A-minus, by the way). My abridged version of the plot goes as such:

Charlie Wilson is a U.S. Representative from southeast Texas — SIDE NOTE: He mentions Nacogdoches, Texas several times in the first 30 minutes of this movie, which is the city I spent four years of my life in while attending Stephen F. Austin State University … so I got a big kick out of that. Wilson loves being a politician, but he likes the booze and floozies that go along with party-life in D.C. more than he does actually doing the public’s work.

Wilson finally finds a cause when he sees Dan Rather reporting from Afghanistan about their fight against Russia. Set in the early 1980s, the U.S. was also in a Cold War against Russia, but Afghanistan took the pounding. So Wilson, with the help of Roberts’ character, a widowed Houston billionaire, gets the ball rolling to get funding so the Afghans can fight Russia. Long story short, it happens, and it helps move along the fall of communism in Europe, and Russia retreats from Afghanistan.

Wilson can’t do it without Hoffman, who plays a disgruntled spy who knows all there is to know about weaponry and how to get weapons to the Middle East without Russia knowing the U.S. did it. Hoffman’s dialogue with Hanks is by far the best part of this movie, and without Hoffman, this film becomes the overrated film starring another Hoffman, “Wag the Dog,” which I liked a lot less.

The movie ends on a sour note, however, when Wilson can’t get funding to help Afghanistan rebuild after its years of fighting Russia. The movie flat out blames Afghanistan’s future hatred toward Americans on this little bit of information, which isn’t fair to history, if you ask me. But hey, this is Hollywood … a place where murders are solved in one-hour incriments.

But I didn’t let the flat ending ruin the film overall for me. So I give “Charlie Wilson’s War” 3 out of 5 stars, based on the acting and the humor.

Plus, it kind of made me want to be a politician some day, but not because of the cocaine and strippers.

Charlie Wilson’s War: *** out of 5 stars.