Freighted with awards expectation, Mike Nichols’ politico-romp left Oscar season sans statue, scoring modest box office numbers and only moderate reviews. It’s a very polite film, despite being tapped out by The West Wing’s savvy Aaron Sorkin and directed by the man behind the brilliantly curdled Carnal Knowledge. The true story of how a hard-drinking congressman tooled up the Taliban to take on the Commies, it’s too in love with its hero (in the feature and the two shiny featurettes) – charmed by his womanising ways and his passion for the Afghans. So, we chuckle with Charlie (Tom Hanks), root for his blue-collar bagman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and cheer as, um, people we now brand ‘terrorists’ blow Russian planes out of the sky. There’s a hint of how US hit-’n’-run foreign policy sowed seeds for the current crisis, but Charlie Wilson’s War is mostly content to smirk and sigh and mildly muse on why it all went wrong.
DVD Extras: The Making Of Charlie Wilson's War, Who Is Charlie Wilson?
