With all the talk about the upcoming presidential election and the state of the economy, it’s easy to forget that George Bush is still the president of the United States. Who better to remind the nation of their commander-in-chief than the eternally sympathetic Oliver Stone, whose last attempt at documenting a president’s life (1995’s Nixon) clothed modern political greed in the garb of great tragedy. W., Stone’s biopic of George Bush, isn’t nearly as dark as Nixon, but it is equally engrossing.
Stone’s last few films have struggled to attain mediocrity. 2006’s World Trade Center was a tame and strangely unemotional tribute to America’s heroes, and 2004’s Alexander was a chaotic mess wherein even the actors didn’t seem to know what was going on. Mr. Stone has proven many times in the past that he is capable of far more than middling cinema. Salvador, Born on the Fourth of July, Platoon, and Natural Born Killers are just a few examples of Stone's daring and creativity as a director; he is at his best when he gets in the audience’s collective face.
W. is far less strident than I believed it would be. The film begins with Bush (Josh Brolin) and his closest advisors discussing what would become his infamous “Axis of Evil” speech before cutting to Bush being hazed by his Yale fraternity brothers. This non-chronological mode of narrative did Stone a disservice in the confused Alexander, but here it serves to underscore the themes he molds into the fabric of the film. Bush feels like his “Poppy,” George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell), consistently reminds him of his inadequacies, often after he has done something incredibly stupid (i.e. ending up in jail, drunk driving, etc.) It isn’t until George meets the future Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) that his life begins to come into some measure of focus. From then on, the film moves from failed political races to George’s successful handling of the Texas Rangers. The most intense moments, however, are reserved for scenes depicting the race to the War in Iraq. The tension between Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld (Richard Dreyfuss and Scott Glenn respectively) in these scenes is gut-wrenching.
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