Director Mike Nichols brings his wisdom, cool incisiveness, and keen ability to crack wise in this odd yet most potent paste-up job of a socio-political satire. We revel in the period piece funhouse of its ’80s kitsch and the gonzo jerry-rigging of politics to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan – as cleverly maneuvered by former Texan congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) and a few conspirators. And it’s all in good fun, on some level, making it perfectly timed for the holiday movie season.
But, of course, a more real and sobering story takes place beyond the edges of the breezy one told here, and that story is told in Wilson’s tearful look of defeat by film’s end. The covert war lubed by American money and weaponry in Afghanistan – and the subsequent abandonment of their social welfare while the Taliban geared up its oppressive machinery – is the unstated subplot of Charlie Wilson’s War. And the elephant in the room of this particular chapter in history is Osama bin Laden and the forces of anti-American terrorism in the Middle East, which festered in the wake of the Soviet smackdown.
In a portent of the future present, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s CIA rogue character at one point comments, “Sooner or late, God is gonna’ be on both sides.”