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| Charlie Wilson's War (Widescreen) | 
 enlarge | Director: Mike Nichols
Actors: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ned Beatty
Studio: Universal Studios
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.98
Buy New: $3.94
You Save: $26.04 (87%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (142 reviews)
Sales Rank: 550
Format: Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Arabic (Original Language), English (Original Language), Russian (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 102 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: MCAD61100566D
UPC: 025195004848
EAN: 0025195004848
ASIN: B0013XZ2QK
Release Date: April 22, 2008
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
finally an intelligent film! January 26, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Charlie Wilson's War is an incredibly well-written, intelligent political drama, starring an impressive cast from Tom Hanks to Amy Adams, with Philip Seymour Hoffman giving the strongest performance. The story is intriguing and important, particularly as it is even more relevant in today's society. This movie is not for the general audience, nor is it intended to be (as is often the case for a lot of Sorkin's work). Mike Nichols does a great job of allowing the cast to act to their full potentials, but without getting bogged down on anyone's particular performance. The fact that Philip Seymour Hoffman stands out loud and clear is a testament to Hoffman's versatility as an actor. If you like movies that make you think, that make you question their historical accuracy, that make you wish the average movie was entertaining as well as education, then Charlie Wilson's War should be your pick.
Surprisingly enjoyable January 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's not often that I come away from a Tom Hanks movie feeling entertained: on a scale of one to ten, one being Carrot Top and ten being Laurence Olivier, I'd rank Hanks about a three. Still, his performance as the titular hero of "Charlie Wilson's War" is so good that even my long-standing dislike of the man's acting style is quashed, Hanks is excellent and so is this movie.
The plot, briefly, concerns Wilson, a small-time good-time U.S. Senator, whose covert efforts to fund the war in Afghanistan against the Russians in the early eighties raise a billion dollars in unofficial weaponry and training. He's aided in his quest to help the Afghanis by faithful secretary Bonnie Bach ("Enchanted"s delightful Amy Adams, in fine form), Texas devout Christian socialite and sometime-consort Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), and Gust Avrokotos (Philip Seymour-Hoffman), a grizzled, experienced CIA Agent.
Performances in this movie are all top-drawer, with Hanks and Seymour-Hoffman having the kind of instantly believable screen chemistry that makes their exchanges a pleasure to watch. Roberts' role is quite small, but she plays it well; Hanks himself gives a likeable and accomplished turn as Charlie Wilson, and Philip Seymour-Hoffman's work here proves once again why he's such an important actor - he steals the show, but does it without resorting to corniness or mugging for the audience.
The script is fantastic, Adam Sorkin's screenplay is witty and literate, and straightforward enough so that even people (like me!) who have difficulty retaining political information for more than thirty seconds will feel drawn in and compelled to find out how Charlie Wilson's War plays out.
Direction is good, Mike Nichols is usually more interesting than this, but then, with such a good script and such excellent character portrayals by such fine actors, there's no need for directorial showiness: "Charlie Wilson's War" is extremely watchable without any extra help.
Wholeheartedly recommended as one of the better Big Movies to come out of Hollywood recently, and a nicely lighthearted look at the Political Drama genre, "Charlie Wilson's War" gives you the "I'm watching a really good movie" feeling in spades, and doesn't disappoint - the ending comes fast and seems a bit rushed (I, for one, could have done with seeing a little more of the post-war fallout), but the vast, vast majority of this tale is well-made, well-told and absolutely worth watching.
Gives short shrift to the blowback part of the story January 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I liked this movie well enough, but feel it was an incomplete adaptation of George Criles' excellent book. Mike Nichols' adaptation basically stops at the point where the Russians are pushed out of Afganistan. There's a small vignette where Charlie Wilson has trouble getting funding once the retreat has happened, meant to symbolize Wilson's pithy comment that "we f---ed up the end game." And Philip Seymour Hoffman's Gust Avrakotos has a good exchange in the 'victory' party where he accurately lays out the impending peril. But, in general, the movie gives short shrift to all the fallout after 'triumph' - Kabul flattened by fractious warlords, the rise of the Taliban, the growing legend and myth of the role of the 'Afghan Arabs' (later to become Al Qaeda), and a general overall sequence of events that Criles calls 'Blowback.' All of these factors have a contributing hand in what eventually leads to 9/11. In short, I like the reviewer on this page who entitled his piece "Be careful what you ask for." Exactly.
Casting-wise, I never cottoned to Julia Roberts in the role of Joanne Herring. I thought Tom Hanks did a passable job as Charlie Wilson, but I don't think it ranks with his best work. Basically, Philip Seymour Hoffman owns the movie. He's brilliant, getting just the right tone of anger, bullheadedness, dismissiveness and - most importantly - effectiveness, the very qualities that Criles celebrates about Avrakotos in his book. MPAA voters agree with this assessment: with the exception of Hoffman's well-deserved nod, the movie was shut out in the nominations announced earlier this week.
 Charlie Wilson's War January 24, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I highly recommend it as both entertaining and profound in its message. As you watch it, try substituting "NATO & American forces" every time "The Soviet Union Army" is mentioned and "Christians" for "Communists" and it becomes even clearer why Bush has us on a mission impossible.
 Should have been re-scripted and called "Ronald Reagan's War" January 23, 2008
8 out of 20 found this review helpful
Charlie Wilson was an important player in helping to rid Afghanistan of the Soviets, but history shows it was Ronald Reagan and his team, Bill Casey in the CIA, etc., who were the constant and most powerful organizing agents to send the missiles to shoot down Soviet helicopters, and who established policy directives to make the Soviets pay a high price for their invasion and barbarism in Afghanistan -- which was but one facet of the COMINTERN's push for world domination, of the Cold War. The movie doesn't go into this aspect, but that's typical Hollywood leftism, not to mention the 100 million victims of communist atrocity during the 20th Century. A good summary article on this is "Hollywood's Sins of Omission" By: Dr. Paul Kengor, which can easily be found on internet. Hollywood typically screws up history (just look at the seditious conduct of many top stars), either trying to make the Americans the bad-guys of history and current events, twisting history to make a celebrity star appear more heroic by making his enemy more villainous (as in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot", where a British officer was falsely tarnished as a mass-murderer of civilians), Speilberg's inserting the obligatory American soldier machine-gunning captured German prisoners at Normandy (the reverse happened many times, in fact), or outright falsely claiming Americans accomplished things -- as with the rescuing of the Enigma machine from a captured Nazi U-boat -- which actually was an heroic mission pulled off by the British. The lesson is, don't trust your history or current-events to Hollywood and the glamor-crowd.
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