.....When I would feel sorry for George W. Bush! But this movie managed to achieve that all but impossible task. Oliver Stone is surprisingly gentle on the Great Decider, letting him off the hook for almost everything, presumably on the grounds that being one can short of a six pack, it was unfair to expect more of him.
Bush is presented as a man propelled by those around him to a level well beyond his ability, like a 6th grader sent directly to high school on the basis of one good test score. Once there he struggles to keep up with kids smarter and more experienced than him, who apparently adopt him as a mascot. Stone's Bush is a disingenuous man of middling ability who overcomes his Frat Boy past and alcohol addiction to find God instead, and who then aims squarely at the White House with the belief that he has God on his side. God Bless America - and God help the rest of us.
Josh Brolin gives a terrific performance, where did this guy from from? Two years ago I'd barely heard of him, and now he has turned in a series of stunning performances; No Country for Old Men, W and now Milk. He's an actor who has come into his best as he approaches middle age, and I will now make a point of going to see whatever he does next, because I can't imagine him signing up for a bad movie. Thandie Newton is interesting as Rice, the token woman in W's inner circle, who looks great but says little and does even less, Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Scott Glenn as Rumsfeld (apparently away with the fairies much of the time...), Toby Jones as Rove - they are all terrific. But Brolin steals the show.
Of course, we really have no way of knowing how accurate this portrayal of the lead up to the Iraq war is. Did Powell (Jeffrey Wright) really capitulate so easily? Was W's mother really such a piece of work? His father (another great performance from James Cromwell who seems to have cornered the market in patriarchs) comes out of it pretty badly too, while Laura seems to be the only ray of light in W's rather sad life (Elizabeth Banks in one of her best performances yet.) But if it's even half true, it's very, very depressing viewing, that a man of such obvious intellectual limitations can get to lead the world's biggest military machine into a war based on scandalously bad intelligence manipulation. And, in a secular democracy, do it all in the name of God.
I'd like to see it remade in the new light of the financial meltdown. Now that would be interesting.
Bush is presented as a man propelled by those around him to a level well beyond his ability, like a 6th grader sent directly to high school on the basis of one good test score. Once there he struggles to keep up with kids smarter and more experienced than him, who apparently adopt him as a mascot. Stone's Bush is a disingenuous man of middling ability who overcomes his Frat Boy past and alcohol addiction to find God instead, and who then aims squarely at the White House with the belief that he has God on his side. God Bless America - and God help the rest of us.
Josh Brolin gives a terrific performance, where did this guy from from? Two years ago I'd barely heard of him, and now he has turned in a series of stunning performances; No Country for Old Men, W and now Milk. He's an actor who has come into his best as he approaches middle age, and I will now make a point of going to see whatever he does next, because I can't imagine him signing up for a bad movie. Thandie Newton is interesting as Rice, the token woman in W's inner circle, who looks great but says little and does even less, Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney, Scott Glenn as Rumsfeld (apparently away with the fairies much of the time...), Toby Jones as Rove - they are all terrific. But Brolin steals the show.
Of course, we really have no way of knowing how accurate this portrayal of the lead up to the Iraq war is. Did Powell (Jeffrey Wright) really capitulate so easily? Was W's mother really such a piece of work? His father (another great performance from James Cromwell who seems to have cornered the market in patriarchs) comes out of it pretty badly too, while Laura seems to be the only ray of light in W's rather sad life (Elizabeth Banks in one of her best performances yet.) But if it's even half true, it's very, very depressing viewing, that a man of such obvious intellectual limitations can get to lead the world's biggest military machine into a war based on scandalously bad intelligence manipulation. And, in a secular democracy, do it all in the name of God.
I'd like to see it remade in the new light of the financial meltdown. Now that would be interesting.