- guardian.co.uk, Friday May 2 2008 10.06 BST
- The Guardian, Friday May 2 2008
A lively and cynical tale about a free-living, sybarite senator finding complex ways to vastly increase the budget for Afghanistan's battle against the Soviet Union. Starting in 1980, it plays like pure Hollywood invention Wag the Dog-style but, amazingly, it's based on a true story, expounded at length in George Crile's book, whose subtitle is The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.
It's brought to vivid life by Mike Nichols, who has previous politically in the neo-Clinton drama of Primary Colors, and writer Aaron Sorkin, who brought us The West Wing. Tom Hanks is in good form in the lead and the movie hits top form in his encounters with a maverick CIA agent even dodgier than himself, played by the routinely great Philip Seymour Hoffman, with much of their dialogue taking place in West Wing-style fast-walking corridor mode.
Unlike the other current agonised US foreign-policy tract, Lions for Lambs, Charlie Wilson's War is entertaining and purposeful, but never smugly so - the aftermath of its events is there in the denouement. But it is noted that a senator who magically raised the budget for this frontline action from $5m to at least $500m was unable to get a piddling $1m for reconstructing Afghan schools.
