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So, to celebrate Ms. Missive’s return to the states, we met up at my local theater to check out Oliver Stone’s newest Presidential Bio-flick W. Of course neither of us are fans of the title subject and having lived with various repercussions of his administration’s assorted policies we’re not exactly unfamiliar with the history of our current President, so little in this flick was expected to be surprising.
Of course, I also wasn’t entirely sure what to expect in this movie either. I’d read the reviews which said everything from “made-for-TV movie at best” to “fair and even portrayal”. And of course everyone has been echoing the opinion that Josh Brolin should be nominated for an Oscar for his role as the Commander in Chief.
Anyway, when Ms. Missive asked me my opinion at the roll of the credits my only response was “hm…” because honestly, I’m still not sure what I thought of it. I agree that Brolin was perfect casting and did an amazing job as Bush, and that perhaps the film was a bit rushed and some of the supporting cast was under-developed.
Other than that, my biggest question was what was the director’s motive in making this movie? At times painting Bush with the brush most often used (Bushisms were echoed throughout the film, of course most of the dialogue was taken directly from actual events- even if the words were moved to other events to take the place of dialogue that could only be speculation) as a spoiled ne’er-do-well, while at others being very sympathetic to the main player and portraying him as someone very human, flawed, and dealing with daddy issues, as well as an idea of good vs/ evil which- while showing him conducting himself with the country’s best interests at heart- also opened him up for charges of oversimplification of world relations.
Stone obviously didn’t seek to lampoon the President or villainize him, but instead make him relateable to the audience. Then there were the scenes depicting the backstage workings of how the invasion of Iraq came to be, showing control of the world’s oil to be a main goal in the beginning and maintaining of the war and occupation there (which many reports have declared to be exaggerated at best, or outright false at worst).
The movie ends with absolutely no real climactic scene or resolution of any sort and really only lets the viewers know it’s over by showing the title card “The End” before rolling the credits.
So, as a character study it was interesting, but not a very compelling movie aside from Brolin’s performance, and maybe that of Richard Dreyfus as Dick Cheney. And, as I said with Religulous I can’t really recommend this flick except to say that if you’re the type of person who would consider seeing it, then you’ll probably already have seen it.
And, as with my last review- here’s the demographic that was in the audience this time around-
At the 1:20pm showing myself, Ms. Missive, an elderly white couple, two roughly middle aged women, one white and one of asian descent wearing a National Guard t-shirt underneath her windbreaker, and one individual who entered when the lights were already down, and left before they came up again.
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