Review: "W."

"Whatever you think of Dubya, he has balls." -Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.

Apparently, Oliver Stone has balls too. Can you imagine trying to sell a biographic account of one of the most unpopular presidents of modern times to a movie studio while he is still in office? Can you see movie studios balking at a script that doesn't mock W or seek to parody him? Can't you see more than one studio saying that people will feel like they watched George W. Bush the movie for the past 8 years?

Director Stone has always had cinematic balls which is why I've always liked him...even when I haven't liked some of his movies. I found "W.", Stone's latest political musing, to be a fascinating look at the life of a man who is way more complex than people make him out to be. Sure, a lot of the movie is fiction or maybe a better way to describe the film would be Stone's interpretation of the known facts of Bush's life.

Stone portrays "dubya" as a man who was consistently wounded growing up by his father's preferential treatment of his brother, Jeb. In one scene, during W's younger days, he comes home drunk and wants to pick a fistfight with the elderly Bush only to be broken up by Barbara and Jeb. According to the film, the elderly Bush was grooming Jeb for a run at the white house but opportunity fell into W's lap. This is the strong theme of the movie, playing off of the Oedipus Complex.

The movie moves back and forth in an out of sequence time line structure between Bush's college party days, the BBQ where he first met Laura, his conversion to Christianity, his run for governor of Texas, his ownership of the Texas Rangers, and his meeting with advisers on invading Iraq. Stone has based a large part of the material on biographies of George W. Bush as well as reporting accounts written by Bob Woodward and Ron Suskind.

If one did not live through the presidency of George W, they may have thought this movie was a fairy tale. The story of an underachieving drunk who became a Christian, completely sobered up, and then attained the most powerful position in the world. That's why this film's story is so intriguing.

I found the conversations about the invasion of Iraq, both leading up to the strike and looking back on the strike, to be the best parts of the movie. Richard Dreyfus plays Dick Cheney (and gives a brilliant supporting performance by the way) as an intelligent Machiavellian manipulator skillfully plotting how the United States can conquer most of the world's oil reserves and thereby create an empire for years to come. Donald Rumsfeld (played by Scott Glenn) chimes in that they will topple Saddam's weak army quickly and wouldn't need a lot of troops to fight the war.

Colin Powell (another great performance from Jeffrey Wright) is the only one in the room to argue against this strategy. Why attack Iraq? Why not stay in Afghanistan and hunt for Osama Bin Laden? His arguments are quickly shot down by Cheney and Rumsfeld. When Powell asks about an exit strategy from Iraq, he is met with an uncomfortable silence. (We know that later on, Powell would resign and now supports Obama for president). Through all of these debates, Bush does not speak much but looks on silently. He reminds Cheney in private during one scene that he, as the president, is the ultimate "decider".

Was Bush really competing with his father on his decision to invade Iraq and finish the job on Saddam Hussein? Remember that "HW" stopped short of going into Baghdad at the conclusion of the gulf war. The movie certainly leans this direction.

However, Bush also speaks to his advisers, out on his ranch away from cameras or media. He tells his advisers that they will be freeing the Iraqi people and will be greeted as liberators. He says that democracy will flourish across the middle east. In real life, Bush has said this many a times at press conferences. I have no doubt that he probably really believed this and maybe still does. Therein, lies the fascination of a president that most people are willing to just write off. For all the cynicism that this administration has produced, there is an overlying sense of idealism...or perhaps naivete.

I want to mention for a moment the performance of Josh Brolin as W. Brolin gives the performance of his life in this movie capturing Bush's temperament as well as distinct movements of the president. This is one of the top performances I have seen this year so far. He shares the limelight, in my mind, with the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. Brolin's performance is definitely worthy of an Oscar nomination. Even when the film gives way to a weakness (the out of sequence storyline grows distracting at points), Brolin and also the rest of the cast really carry this thing through to the end.

Director Stone, while leaning left, has made a movie that seeks to be empathetic to W. This is not a comedy but a genuine attempt to understand the current president and make sense of his life. While this is certainly not as good as JFK or even Nixon (two of Stone's other movies), it is a worthy addition to the film catalog of a director who is known for pulling no punches.