By Curt Schleier

The Charlie Wilson of CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR is a real life character in every sense of the word “character.”  He represented a Texas congressional district that seemed to have few needs. Wilson was able to vote for everyone else’s pork projects without asking favors in return; as a result, he built up a lot of markers among his colleagues.

He was also a totally likable guy, with a fondness for white powder, good booze and fast women.  He staffed his office with attractive young women on the theory that “You can teach anyone to type but you can’t teach them to grow tits.”

But his rapscallion personality masked a sharp mind and deep respect for the Constitution and the political process.  And he didn’t take crap from anyone – even campaign contributors.

A rich constituent wants Wilson to help his effort to place a crèche at a fire house on city property.  Wilson sends him on his way with the suggestion that a church just a few blocks from the fire house would be a more appropriate site. 

“It’s East Texas.  Who are we offending?  This isn’t Scarsdale, for goodness sakes.”  (That may be an in-joke.  Scarsdale is an extremely wealthy suburb of New York City with a large Jewish population -- and where screenwriter Aaron Sorkin grew up.)


It’s 1980.  At the end of 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan while the rest of the world watched.  Then President Carter publicly authorized a boycott of the 1980 Olympics and secretly okayed a covert CIA operation that armed the Afghan freedom fighters.

However, the $5 million allocated for the Mujahideen was less that a proverbial drop in the bucket; it was a drop in the ocean.  Even almost 30 years ago, $5 million didn’t buy a lot of modern weaponry.  Afghans were being slaughtered and that is where matters stood until Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) entered the picture.

Spurred on by his sometime girl friend, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), Wilson visits Pakistan’s President Zia (Om Puri).  He thinks it’s just a courtesy call, and is so unprepared he even asks for whiskey in the Presidential Palace of a Moslem country.  Zia of course expected more and becomes exasperated. “Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing,” he asks.

“Tradition mostly,” is Wilson’s response, as he tries to gracefully end the conversation and get out of there.  But as he leaves, Zia begs him to visit the refugee camps.  Hundreds of thousands of Afghanis have fled over the border and Pakistan just doesn’t have the facilities to care for them.

Wilson does and what he sees changes him: there are children without arms.  The Soviets have sprinkled the ground with shiny objects that encourage young children to pick them up.  They are tied to explosives.  The idea is that parents will be too busy caring for injured children to fight in a war.

Wilson comes back and campaigns for additional funds for the CIA – battling an entrenched spy bureaucracy that doesn’t want the war to end.  Some in the Agency just want the Soviets to get mired in Afghanistan the way we were in Vietnam.

But he finds an ally in Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an unconventional CIA agent who want to do right by the Afghani people.  Because it cannot appear obvious that the U.S. is helping the Mujahideen, so the Afghanis must be supplied with Soviet weapons.  Why has the greatest cache of Russian arms?  The Israelis that’s who; they captured them in previous wars.  Wilson has to convince the Israelis to give arms to a Muslim nation that doesn’t recognize it.  But Wilson finesses it all, and the rest as they say is history.  It becomes the only successful jihad in modern times, as the Russians eventually withdraw after substantial losses in both men and materials.

A word about the acting:  Hanks is excellent as Wilson, clearly and cleverly walking a fine line between portraying him as a hedonist and hero, since he was clearly both.  Amy Adams, who plays Bonnie Bach, an amalgam of several Wilson staffers, and Roberts do fine in relatively undemanding roles.  But it is Hoffman as the CIA agent, who steals the film. It’s been a good couple of years for Hoffman, who is one of the finest actors working today.  He won the Academy Award for playing the title role in Capote and had significant and well played roles in three films released in the last few months: BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOUR DEAD, SAVAGES, and, of course, this one.


It’s hard to say enough about Aaron Sorkin, as well.  This is a brilliant script based on the late George Crile’s book.  He and director Mike Nichols have managed to pull off the almost impossible: a smart intelligent films that’s also entertaining.

Finally, in the no good deed goes unpunished category, after raising hundreds of millions in congressional funding for the war, Wilson was unable to get a $1 million appropriation to build schools in Afghanistan.  And, of course, the same people we helped liberate went on to harbor Osama.