Charlie Wilson's War Sneak Preview

If there ever was a candidate for "good old boy" of the year it would be Charlie Wilson who with a lot nerve, a little mascara, and a stiff drink changed modern history.

"Good-Time Charlie" Wilson (Tom Hanks), an extremely flawed and fun-loving Congressman from East Texas, who manages to deftly work the levers of power to funnel money and weapons to the Mujahedin of Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of the small country in 1979. Johann Herring (Julia Roberts) is the Houston socialite who meets him, wines and dines him while wooing him to her personal crusade cause. She is sympathetic to the Afghani fighters and wants to help them but needs someone with position and power to help her. She wins Charlie to her cause and he sets to work finding assistance in strange places starting with the renegade CIA agent whose outsider status and womanizing ways endears him to Wilson makes him Congressman Wilson's favorite guy. When he picks up and goes out near the field of battle he finds help from a willing Pakistani dictator who is equally fascinated and infatuated by the Johann.

He even finds friends among the Israelis who modify and manufacture Soviet weapons to maintain the wink-and-nudge illusion of American neutrality while the Congressman is busy getting these weapons to the war front and eventually driving the Soviet Union from Afghani land, installing the Mujahedin and eventually the Taliban into secure power in the country, all orchestrated by a Congressman from Texas. Surrounded by beautiful women and his own internal struggles this movie will be loved by the crowd who is rushing out to see American Gangster (they are both true stories). An unsuspecting character found in Charlie Wilson is thrown in the wild world of money and weapons trafficking, all right under the noses of the people pledged to stop such things and instigated by a country who is supposed to be morally above such activities.

Personally I was able to get ahold a prescreening copy of this film and I loved it. It makes me want to go out and get a copy of the book that it is based on as well. It really shows an inside part of American politics and an American way of doing business that is hidden from public view. It is very hard to really identify or fall in love with any character in this film because no one is really good enough, morally, to take the side of. Some people will find this frustrating and they will feel torn and toyed with during the movie. Personally, I found it fascinating and an excellent example of government corruption and how that corruption sometimes finds you not the other way around.