Only Elizabeth Banks’ Laura Bush is also not a caricature, but one gets almost nothing of the life of this woman that W. loves, especially after she marries the man. Why? Because it might humanize the real Bush to his detractors (however correct they may be)? Would that not make him all the more vexing and a better character for a work of art? Of course. Stone is smart enough to know this, therefore his choice of this portrayal is tantamount to a snubbing of connoisseurs of film, screenwriting, and acting.
As for the other leads? They are uniformly terrible. The worst transgressor is Thandie Newton’s lisping and speech-impedimented NSA, Condoleezza Rice. It’s so bad a performance that I cannot even do it justice, save to say that the only way it could have been salvaged is to have her break out into a performance of Springtime For Hitler. Richard Dreyfuss’ Vice President Dick Cheney is almost as bad. Yes, Dreyfuss is made up to look like Cheney, and snarls and misappropriates power; but just watch the scene where he, Bush, and the top-level Cabinet folk discuss the reasons to invade Iraq and Iran, and watch Dreyfuss almost drool and slaver over the word EM-PIRE, and one might feel this was an outtake from an updated Dr. Strangelove. It simply does not work, and then there is a bizarre oddity in that a world map, Cheney points to, shows China without Tibet as part of its boundary.
Scott Glenn’s Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a cipher, Ioan Gruffudd’s British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a vapid, mealy-mouthed airhead who does as he’s told without cogitation, and Toby Jones’ scheming Karl Rove is a sycophant and weasel (and possibly a closet homosexual), while Bruce McGill actually looks like FBI Director George Tenet, and does not overact, but is mocked as being asleep in bed during Bush’s State Of The Union Address where the Weapons Of Mass Destruction lie first started, against his approval.
The only Bushie cut any slack is Secretary Of State Colin Powell, yet Jeffrey Wright plays him as an impotent and Tommish lackey. Only Stacy Keach’s carny-level preacher, Earl Wood, seems suited for the parodic treatment he is given, yet, oddly, his characterization is far less buffoonish than that of the politicos. And the fact that the two most interesting characters (and portrayals) in W.’s life are Poppy and preacher Wood may be due to the fact that Cromwell and Keach are likely the two best actors in the cast, which only points out the need for Stone to have done better casting to cover up the gaping holes in his script.
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