Charlie Wilson’s War

Year: 2007

Grade: B

Country: USA

Director: Nichols

Review

aaron sorkin (west wing) writes and mike nichols (graduate) directs. with that in mind i entered the film. it’s good, but not as good as that collaboration (including the talents of tom hanks and philip seymore hoffman) would indicate. they do a fine job overall, but i found myself checking my watch more often than i would have liked. the note that the film ends on is perhaps the best part of the film (along with hoffman’s character). it relays the story of a zen master and a young boy. after a young boy gets a horse the townspeople talk about how lucky the boy is, but the zen master simply says “we’ll see.” later, the boy falls off this very horse and injures his legs and the town mourned his unfortunate fate, but the zen master remarks again: “we’ll see.” later, when war broke out and the young boy couldn’t be drafted, the townspeople remark on the boy’s fortune…you get the point. this story is a good way of looking at the cia’s successful covert war against the ussr via afghanistan. on the one hand it gave the ussr its first defeat and could be said to be a cause for the fall of communism, on the other hand it armed a dangerous region and gave the mujahadin increased power which has led to some of the problems we’re seeing now.

Watched in theater