I dragged Scott to Charlie Wilson's War (IMDB.com) last night. I had a hard time convincing anyone else to see a movie starring Tom Hanks, but Scott relented since I go to his movie pics too.
I have mixed feelings about Charlie. I can understand how Director Mike Nichols and screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin would have thought this would have been good story for a movie. Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Julia Roberts certainly seemed to maximize their characters' interesting flaws. Although I thought Roberts had a significantly smaller and less interesting role compared to Hoffman's more entertaining disheveled fat guy shtick.
The movie does a good job portraying Afghans as sympathetic victims of the Soviet Union. The movie also points out the US' mistake for not supporting Afghanistan's post-war reconstruction. And it delicately mentions the indirect aftermath that led to 9/11 and our current fiasco.
Charlie is advertised as a farce and yet its hard to see any humor in the situation. The idea that the US would throw money and weapons for its own self-serving purposes is sad and disturbing. Maybe it's just too soon to see the humor of war or it's too uncomfortable to see what our government can do when everyone responsible turns a blind eye.
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