| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

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| Movie Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Movie Reviews

Charlie Wilson's War. Dir. by Mike Nichols. Prod. by Gary Goetzman and Tom Hanks. Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, Participant Productions, and Playtone, 2007. 97 mins. (Universal Pictures, http://www.universalpictures.com/)
"Charlie Wilson's War" is a misnomer, in that the title refers to one war, while Wilson's wars were many. The Texas congressman Charlie Wilson, played by Tom Hanks with an effortless blend of shame and grace, is a freewheeling boozer and womanizer in the halcyon days of the late 1970s, when "political correctness" was not yet chic, and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll had lost their Vietnam War–era implications. A pair of Deep Throats, we should remember, had recently done in both Richard M. Nixon and the prudish 1950s sensibility he seemed to embody.	1
Wilson's wars include his battle to save his career (he is under assault from the federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, who is tracking down evidence of cocaine use) and, equally, his battle with congressional colleagues who see no imperative to support Afghan freedom fighters. Wilson also battles a Central Intelligence Agency (cia) bureaucracy that wants to outlast the Russians rather than defeat them. He is helped, however, by Gust Avrakotos (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman), a cia maverick with a violent temper, a Zen world view, and a zest for homicide: "I kill Russians," he says repeatedly. Killing Russians seems, in fact, to be the goal of all the good guys in the film.	. . .

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