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Friday, January 04, 2008

Charlie Wilson's War 

It's good. It's very good. It's less subtle than it thinks it is, and is possibly the least surprising script that could possibly come from the hand of Aaron Sorkin. I mean, he found a story about a Democratic politician who did a little cocaine and did the right thing in Afghanistan? If the story wasn't true, I would damn Sorkin for writing such a banal allegory.

If the film has weaknesses, they are at least pleasant weaknesses: gratuitous nudity (aside from one easily bowdlerized scene at the start of the movie, you could show this film in high-school civics classes), name-dropping, and slightly clumsy exposition scenes. It engages in extraordinarily shallow hindsight at almost every junction (unknown unknowns are all clearly understood by our heroes ahead of time).

The acting is uniformly solid, which may be the highest praise I can offer.

This movie deserves a more thorough critique (rather than this shallow review), especially since as a right-wing kook who liked it, I'm in a unique position to highlight its virtues, much like a Canucks fan describing what they admire about Minnesota.

But I'm lazy.

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