
Charlie Wilson’s War
15, Nationwide
Mike Nichols’s latest film is a mixed bag and a stuffed bag and, incredibly, none the worse for either. In its rat-a-tat, rapid-fire 95 minutes you get bombings, mines, refugee camps, casualties, hot tubs, Playboy cover girls, arms dealers, cocaine, scandal, Tom Hanks’s naked butt (surprisingly delicious; peachy), CIA agents, world presidents — and all in a movie that is partly serious political satire and partly just a hoot. A film about America’s covert funding of the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan a hoot? Listen, I know a hoot when I see one, and this is a hoot.
OK, so who is this Charlie Wilson and what exactly is this war? Good question. Top marks. This is based on a true story and so a true person, the Charlie Wilson who, as a Democrat, represented Texas’s Second Congressional District in the House of Representatives until he retired in 1996.

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