A feel-good comedy about a covert US effort to fund resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? What will Hollywood think of next?
Oscar winners Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mike Nichols, with the help of “West Wing” scribe Aaron Sorkin, find considerable laughter in this allegedly fact-based mission improbable.
The action begins not in the Middle East but in a hot tub at a Las Vegas hotel in 1980, when Charlie Wilson (Hanks), a Texas congressman, is diverted from his topless female companions by Dan Rather’s famous in-mufti “60 Minutes” report from Afghanistan.
Before you can say “What’s the frequency, Kenneth,” the liberal Wilson, who chairs a key appropriations subcommittee, is being wooed – in more ways than one – by Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts in big hair), a right-wing Texas heiress who hates the Russkies as much as Charlie does.
With the help of a rogue CIA analyst named Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman), these unlikely allies (and occasional lovers, though the stars have no chemistry) plot to secretly deliver a billion dollars’ worth of (highly illegal) weapons to the mujahadeen rebels.
President Reagan, you see, couldn’t officially ask for the money because of Iran-Contra, among other reasons.
Yes, Charlie and Joanne make a secret trip to Afghanistan, where they see horribly maimed children.
But this is first and foremost a farce, not unlike Nichols’ “The Birdcage.”
The funniest sequence has a bemused Gust being ushered in and out of Charlie’s office while the congressman’s gorgeous all-female staff – headed by Amy Adams of “Enchanted” – is trying to spin a drug scandal involving the boss.
The references to Charlie’s coke-sniffing and boozing were reportedly toned down in Sorkin’s zinger-filled script (“You can teach ’em to type, but you can’t teach ’em to grow t – – s,” Charlie says by way of explaining why a former Miss Cotton Bowl is his chief of staff).
Sporting a truly frightening mustache and eyeball-gouging early ’80s outfits, Hoffman dominates his scenes left and right. At one point he secures rocket launchers for the Afghan rebels by putting together an Israeli intelligence officer and a supplier from Pakistan, who are entertained by a belly dancer procured by Charlie.
This credulity-straining if highly entertaining story – based on a book by the late CBS producer George Crile – is framed by a ceremony in which Wilson is credited with winning the Cold War and causing the fall of the USSR by funding the Russkies’ first and only defeat. (Reagan’s tacit support is not mentioned.)
Things didn’t turn out so well for Afghanistan, of course. The film suggests this happened because Charlie somehow couldn’t get a measly million-dollar appropriation for education through Congress.
What a timid wimp-out for the liberal stars (Hanks has done nothing better since “Castaway”) and filmmakers. Many of the US-funded weapons ended up in the hands of the Taliban – and this more or less directly led to 9/11 and the current war in Iraq.
But that would make it a lot harder to laugh at “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which if you ask me is still a tough sell as holiday entertainment.