Good-time Charlie's foreign affairs

By A.O. SCOTT
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK
Wednesday, Feb 06, 2008, Page 12

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Most of the recent films we've seen about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq remind us what a drag those conflicts are, which may be why so few of us have bothered to go see them. Take the Cold War: A "long, twilight struggle" (as John F. Kennedy put it) that brought the world to the brink of annihilation. Horrible, to be sure. But also kind of a blast.

That, at any rate, is pretty much the gist of Charlie Wilson's War, which may be more of a hoot than any picture dealing with the bloody, protracted fight between the Soviet Army and the Afghan mujahidin has any right to be.

But let's not get ahead of the story. After all, a mighty blow for freedom was struck by a congressman with an alleged fondness for snorting blow. And let's not be too quick to dismiss the wisdom of his sidekick, a CIA operative with a bad temper and a worse haircut: "If you're gonna do this, you might as well have fun with it."

Fun this movie's unlikely and persuasive motto. If it's the best political movie to come around in a while, that may be because the director, Mike Nichols, and the screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, grasp that politics, for all its seriousness, is an essentially comic undertaking. Their film is never glib or flippant, but instead shows a lightness of touch and a swiftness of attack that stand in welcome contrast to the plodding, somber earnestness of some recent movies I will tactfully refrain from naming.

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Not that discretion is necessarily the better part of valor. And it's hard to imagine a hero as indiscreet as Charlie Wilson, a Democrat who represented Texas's Second Congressional District in the House of Representatives. Wilson, who retired from the House in 1996, is played with sly, rascally charisma by Tom Hanks.

Film Notes CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR DIRECTED BY: Mike Nichols STARRING: TOM HANKS (CHARLIE WILSON), JULIA ROBERTS (JOANNE HERRING), PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN (GUST AVRAKOTOS), AMY ADAMS (BONNIE BACH), NED BEATTY (DOC LONG), EMILY BLUNT (JANE LIDDLE), OM PURI (PRESIDENT ZIA), KEN STOTT (ZVI), JOHN SLATTERY (CRAVELY), DENIS O'HARE, (HAROLD HOLT), JUD TYLOR (CRYSTAL LEE) RUNNING TIME: 96 MINUTES TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY

An womanizer, Wilson staffs his office with long-stemmed babes. He's a sharp political operator all the same, and also a man of conscience, as his patient, all-seeing assistant (Amy Adams) is pleased to discover.

When we first encounter Wilson, he's very much in his element: soaking in a Las Vegas hot tub with company, his hand wrapped around a glass of Scotch and his mind focused on the consequences of Soviet aggression. As understood by Nichols and Sorkin, Wilson is both an anomaly and a paragon.

A liberal as well as a libertine, he finds common cause (among other satisfactions) with Joanne Herring, a right-wing Houston socialite who loves Jesus and martinis and hates Communism. She is a splendid American contradiction, standing up for liberty and godliness while getting into bed (literally) with a bachelor congressman and (metaphorically) with President Zia (Om Puri), the military ruler of Pakistan.

Julia Roberts, as golden as an Oscar statue, incarnates Herring as if paying tribute at once to Barbara Stanwyck and to the legions of anonymous Julia Roberts impersonators toiling in drag clubs across the land. I mean this entirely as praise: Not many movie stars have the wit or the moxie to embrace the camp elements of their own personas.

The third player in this high-living, hard-partying jihad is Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a CIA operative whose first appearance in Charlie Wilson's office sends the movie tipping, momentarily and deliciously, into pure door-slamming farce. Gust is as frustrated as Charlie is by the refusal of the US to arm the Afghan resistance, and so the two of them cook up an elaborate scheme involving Israel, Pakistan, a belly dancer and a compliant House Subcommittee chairman (Ned Beatty).

There is a bracing, cheering present-day moral to be found in Charlie Wilson's story, a reminder that high principles are not incompatible with the pleasure principle. The good guys are the ones who know how to have a good time, and who counter the somber certainties of totalitarianism with the conviction that fun is woven into the fabric of freedom.