Charlie Wilson's War

How wonderful for humanity it would be if future life forms studied nothing but the selected works of Mike Nichols to find out what life was like in the 20th and 21st centuries on Earth. These future civilizations would come away thinking that Earth was inhabited by a race of acerbic, fantastically witty beings whose seeming mistakes were in fact calculated ploys to gain every possible advantage from the situation at hand.

In "Charlie Wilson's War" we have an example of just such a group of life forms. It is rare that a director is able to make war in Afghanistan substantially less interesting than the drinking of a glass of scotch, but in Nichols' film futures are decided by moments so fraught and yet incidental that the war footage (most of it authentic) seems almost like an intrusion when it finally appears. The plot follows the story of real-life congressman Charles Wilson, who was instrumental in funding Afghanistan's fight against Russia in the 1980's. What could have been an extremely dry and instructive movie, like so many dealing with Middle East politics, is instead almost a drawing-room comedy, all the more disturbing once you realize that these events actually took place and that lives and wars were decided offhandedly by Texas politicians with demonstrably shaky judgment.

Part of the film's triumph comes from Tom Hanks' performance as Charlie. There are shades of Forrest Gump in it, in the story of a southern man who finds himself in situations of grave historical import which he cannot begin to understand. But what a complex and difficult performance this is in contrast! Charlie's political background has taught him to hide his intentions behind dark, narrowed eyes, and no matter how much Hanks' mouth smiles, his eyes never open to the camera. Even we don't know at the end of the film whether he was truly dumb or just realized that playing that way was the easiest way to get what he wanted.

It is practically redundant to say that a Philip Seymour Hoffman performance anchors the film and confidently allows the rest of the plot to swirl around it, but let me repeat the tired evaluation yet again. As Gust, a rogue CIA agent who would dearly love more funding for his three-man Afghanistan team, he enters the film with a bang (quite literally) and spends the rest of his time forcing the actors around him to give their best just to keep up. He blusters, lies, sputters and manipulates, and still we root for him.

Other performances in the film are solid, but Hoffman and Hanks set the bar higher than most of their colleagues can quite reach. Nichols has a true talent for pulling career-high performances out of actors when the script provided will allow him to do so, and this film is no exception. Its tone is frothy comedy on the surface, but the mere idea that such a venue is where life-and-death decisions are made makes for a dark undercurrent that gives the film much-needed bite. I believe the word "underrated" will eventually b e applied to this film; current audiences seem to have thought it was yet another Middle East war movie and the promotional materials did little to discourage that opinion. But in truth the war seems secondary and far away from this film, much as it did to those whose lives are depicted in it.