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Charlie Wilson's War Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: R (for strong language, nudity/sexual content and some drug use) Genre: Comedy, Drama Theater release: December 21, 2007 by Universal Pictures Directed by: Mike Nichols Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes Cast: Tom Hanks (Charlie Wilson), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Gust Avrakotos), Julia Roberts (Joanne Herring), Amy Adams (Bonnie Bach) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

If there wasn't already plenty of documentation to back it up, especially the book of the same name by the late CBS correspondent George Crile, you might have a hard time believing that Charlie Wilson's War is based on a true story. The tale and its larger-than-life characters seem too outrageous to believe. The truth, they say, is stranger than fiction, and this film is proof.

Mike Nichols, the 76-year-old director who last visited politics as unusual in Primary Colors, shows he's every bit as much in command of Charlie Wilson as he was of Benjamin Braddock in his 1967 film, The Graduate. And yet, for all of his considerable talent, one can't help getting the feeling that even the director is being directed on this one. This is one film where even the minutest detail is laid out in the script.

Tom Hanks as Congressman Charlie Wilson

Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President) is easily and effortlessly Hollywood's most politically astute scribe. In his first film since more than a decade doing superlative work on television (Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip), Sorkin has found a too-outrageous-to-be-true story that both appeals to his inner politico and flawlessly suits his audacious talent. Charlie Wilson's War has all of his flash and blistering one-liners on display, but dials back somewhat on the customary rat-tat-tat delivery. The riotous manner in which the script is written is the spoonful of sugar that helps the history lesson go down.

Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-Texas) is the uncle you had growing up who always embarrassed your parents to no end, but whom you secretly loved because he was the only one who seemed to know how to have any fun. Nichols and Sorkin wisely show us what kind of man Charlie is, rather than merely tell us.

Julia Roberts as rich and powerful socialite Joanne Herring

When first we meet Charlie (Tom Hanks), it is 1980 and he is submerged up to his neck in a Las Vegas jacuzzi, surrounded by half-naked strippers and Playboy bunnies who are ingesting single-malt whiskey and cocaine with equal relish. Charlie's D.C. office isn't all that different. Surrounded by a staff of beautiful office assistants whom he refers to as his "jailbait," Charlie drinks at ten in the morning, dodges an ethics violations for lunch, spends the afternoon skirting important votes and whittles away the cold, night hours with some new, long-legged piece of legislation. Mr. Smith he is not.

While "Good Time Charlie" may skirt the line and occasionally even cross it, his district seems willing to overlook his indiscretions so long as he keeps the bacon coming. And Charlie, possessed of a keen knowledge of history, foreign affairs and government power structures, shows time and again that little can withstand his charismatic charm. But unbeknownst to this loveably crass "man of many character flaws," his life is about to take a very serious turn. He is about to launch the largest, most successful covert operation of the entire Cold War.

Constituent, sometime lover of Charlie, socialite and sixth-richest woman in Texas, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) is a powerful, right wing, Southern blueblood who has taken on Afghanistan, recently overrun by Russian troops, as her pet project. Herring uses all of her supple wiles to convince Charlie, who serves on the Congressional Appropriations Committee, to go to Pakistan and see for himself the refugee camp where hundreds of thousands of Afghans who fled the Soviet advance now live in squalor. The camp, full of starving families, orphans, and mangled children, breaks Charlie's heart and fills his belly with fire.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos

He immediately returns home and begins convincing his colleagues to set aside more money for the Mujahideen resistance fighters, ballooning the budget from five million dollars to one billion. Charlie finds ready muscle in Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a surly CIA spook who loathes Commies about as much as he hates his bean-counting supervisors. Years spent overseas has given Avrakotos all the shady contacts he needs to get weapons into the hands of Wilson's freedom fighters.

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