Beating around the Bush

W
15, Nationwide

W, which should be pronounced ‘dubya’, the Texan way, as in George ‘Dubya’ Bush — but never as in, for example, Dubya. H. Smith — is Oliver Stone’s dramatised portrait of the 43rd American President and it’s pretty much neither here nor there; neither sympathetic enough to be one thing nor, alas, deadly enough to be the other. I don’t know what held Stone back, why he beats around the Bush, why he didn’t just grab an iron bar and thrash the living daylights out of whatever is in there. What is in there? If there is something, this film doesn’t tell us, and if there isn’t, if Bush is just a hollow shell of nothingness, how did he manage to become top dog of the world’s top nation? It doesn’t tell us that either. Consequently, it isn’t illuminating and it isn’t interesting. Not having a point of view is fine — I don’t have a point of view about most things, points of view being quite tiring — but to not have a point of view in the cinema isn’t helpful.