At a time when average citizens find it progressively hopeless to discuss the cause and effect of current American foreign policy, perhaps the approach of Mike Nichols’ Charlie Wilson’s War is the only way to keep people talking. Telling the true story of a behaviorally questionable Texan congressman with enough idealism and smarts to affect political change in the Cold War, the film thoughtfully convinces us of its seemingly unbelievable tale while gliding as lightly as its hero does through an unknown slice of political history. It is shocking that the story remained unknown for so long because the direct and crucial effect was no less than the retreat of the Soviets from Afghanistan.
The movie stars Tom Hanks as Charlie Wilson, a Texas congressman who is hardly a role model as he hangs out with strippers, snorts coke, and drinks too much in his spare time. He is far from ignorant of world affairs, however, as we see him in the beginning intently listening to Dan Rather reporting on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, much to the chagrin of the strippers in the bathtub with him. And as the story progresses, we gradually see that his interest is not without idealism.
He first meets a rich, devout, right wing socialite and former TV show hostess, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), who is not shy to share her hatred of the communists and how she is repelled by the atrocities of the Soviets towards Afghanistan. She has a plan carved out for him: to provide the Afghans with the arms to defend themselves by shooting down Soviet helicopters. Knowing the American government could not fathom the possibility of lending their own weapons to the Afghan citizens, her suggestion is to negotiate a deal between the Israelis who secretly have numerous Soviet RPGs and Pakistan, where many Afghan refugees flood over to across the border to escape.
Charlie is certainly in a good position to do this, being on the Defense Appropriations Committee, but is completely floored by this idea. His mind is soon swayed, however, after an arranged meeting with President Zia of Pakistan and a tour through a camp of displaced refugees including many children with limbs missing. He, along with his assistant, Bonnie Bach (Amy Adams), looks for a CIA operative to give him the mechanical details of the situation.
Article comments
1 - carlyle
If you believe that the resistance fighters of the 1980s became the Taliban of the 1990s, you show little appreciation of the complex course of Afghan history in the last thirty years.
2 - John
I was talking in looser terms. I know that the Taliban actually formed from the thousands of refugees displaced into Pakistan. But the Taliban wouldn't have risen to power so quickly if it weren't in the wake of the war leaving the entire country in ruins and warlords freely reigning with the mass firearms provided to them.