Movie Monday

I saw Charlie Wilson's War this weekend. Very good movie. Well directed by Mike Nichols, taken from a book by George Crile screenplay byAaron Sorkin. Great cast including Tom Hanks as Charlie Wilson. Julia Roberts and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Since I am not really very good at explaining the story of a movie I stole this little snipit from a web site I like to visit. It will help to explain things.he Internet Movie Database

"Good-Time Charlie" Wilson, a flawed and fun-loving Congressman from the piney woods of East Texas, deftly operates the levers of power to funnel money and weapons to the Mujahedin of Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of their country in late 1979. Charlie finds assistance in the oddest of places -- a renegade CIA agent whose outsider status and womanizing ways endears him to Wilson; a Houston socialite who leads Wilson to the cause; the willing Pakistani dictator fascinated by the socialite; the Israelis who modify and manufacture Soviet weapons to maintain the wink-and-nudge illusion of American neutrality; and the women -- ooh the women.

Based on the story (and the excellent book of the same name) that is so true and engaging that artistic liberties are not needed, even if they are taken in the film. "

Now that we have gotten all that out of the way. I would like to say the story this is based on was a very political hot potato when it was going on. The Soviet Union was bombing Afghanistan passed the stone age trying to get into Pakistan and the other close lying countries which obviously would have been a tremendous security problems for the whole world. The United States couldn't really do anything to help the Afghans, such as guns, tanks etc. because the Russians would have known where the weapons were coming from and then it would have become as they said in Washington a real war. So in comes Charlie who does a fantastic job of figuring out how to help and ends up bringing down the Soviet Union in the process. The one glitch is, and this is what makes this whole movie so poignant and not so funny, what happens after the Afghans win. Well we all know that, as Gust, the CIA guy tells Charlie after all is over, we have to do something to back up Afghanistan, all the crazies (Taliban) are moving in. The American government does nothing. The Afghans won the war (or we did) so now who cares. There is a very interesting quote from Charlie Wilson at the end of the movie that pretty much sums it all up, I will paraphrase .....It was a great time, wonderful things were done......but we fucked up the end game.......Nothing truer could ever have been said. For those of you out there who don't remember where the beginning of the end (9/11) started, go see this movie.

Enjoy

Susan

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