I caught this flick by myself in January because I figured it’d be up for something once the nominations were announced, but I wasn't entirely interested in seeing it.

The film follows Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a womanizing, fun loving, Texas congressman who teams up with high society conservative Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) and CIA Agent Gust Avrakotos (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) to supply weapons to Afghanistan and defeat the Soviets, thus ending the Cold War. However, he soon learns that with one defeat, he must be prepared to face ten more obstacles. While it sounds rather heroic and uplifting, Charlie really only does these things to see if he can, not necessarily to end the war. He ends up caring a bit by the end, but mostly he's just testing the limits of his power. The film follows him and Gust as they meet with important people, raise money, and push votes through committees. Not exactly the most thrilling material, but then again the film is being marketed as a comedy. What this story really boils down to is a film about a shady politician and a war. The last half of the film even weaves in scenes of Afghanis shooting down Soviet helicopters with a running tally of helicopters down and throughout the film they use war footage and explosions as transitions between scenes, which was a little unsettling and rather hard to laugh at. There’s also a subplot of Charlie getting into some murky territory with a looming claim that he was involved in a night of drinking, drugs, and sex (which he was, incidentally, but we never actually see him do drugs) that could knock him out of office, yet this is equally as uninteresting as the main plot.

I really only liked two things about this movie: Amy Adams, who plays Charlie’s main assistant Bonnie and seems to be the only woman in Charlie’s life who can resist him and keep him in check, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, whose character I hated, but thought he was quite good in the role. There’s a scene where Bonnie and Charlie visit the refugee camps and see that all these people want is their country back that is quite touching. The film ends with a conversation between Gust and Charlie about how doing a good thing doesn’t always end well and it’s exactly how I felt about this film. It was a good effort, with a great cast, but it drags throughout and completely fizzles at the end. When it was over I just felt slightly more depressed about the whole thing.

Nominations:

Best Supporting Actor – Phillip Seymour Hoffman
After finishing this film and knowing that so many of the actors were up for Golden Globes at that point, I said to myself that the only person I didn’t mind winning for this would be Hoffman. He plays a pathetic, schlub of a CIA agent, washed up and with a short fuse, that gets shuffled to the Cold War unit to get out of his boss’ hair, but he’s fantastic in the role. I was glad to see him get the only nomination for this film, but no one will overcome the powerhouse of Javier Bardem this year.