Though Tom Hanks has proven his acting chops through the years, he is miscast as Charlie Wilson. Hanks lacks the swarthiness of the womanizing dealmaker Wilson admits to being, and the toughness of the back room legislator Wilson would have had to posses. No matter how hard he tries, there's niceness to Tom that shines through even when he's trying to be caddish.

Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson, or even Russell Crowe would have been more convincing. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the best fit here as Gust. He looks like a tired guy who has been fighting the bureaucracy for years to get some to listen to him. Hoffman is a master at playing the slovenly lout.

Mike Nichols' handling of the rundown to the end of the Soviet-Afghanistan war is perfunctory at best. The first Mujahideen shoots down Soviet helicopters with shoulder-fired missiles supplied by the United States. (Rep. Wilson is seen high-fiving and hugging his staff.)

A single combat montage with onscreen Soviet casualty statistics substitutes for any dramatic sense of how the David-and-Goliath dynamic suddenly shifted. There is virtually no mention of how those Afghan "freedom fighters" later became the Taliban and turned their wrath to the United States and the rest of the Western World.

To end the story on the eve of September 11, 2001 would be a complete downer for the film. Instead, we are left with Gust's warning, "The crazies are rolling into Kandahar," and Wilson failing to get funding for the building of a school in Pakistan. While all this may be true, it still feels a bit ill timed. Charlie Wilson may have helped to end the cold war, but did he inadvertently help to ignite the war on terror?

Charlie Wilson's War is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. The audio is available in English Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, and French Dolby Digital 5.1. Spanish and French subtitles and English closed captioning is also available.

The extras included with Charlie Wilson's War are a bit disappointing. "Who Is Charlie Wilson?" (12:00) contains brief interviews with the real Charlie Wilson and Joanne Herring. In addition, there are also brief clips from the 60 Minutes' segment, "Charlie Did It."

The DVD also contains a pretty standard "Making of" featurette (17:00). It consists of standard interviews with the actors, producers, director, writer, and other principles involved in the film.