Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Nobody knows, and I ain’t tellin’

And now our Sorkin watch-along moves from the TV Hollywood of Studio 60 back to the actual, film-making Hollywood for a bit, starting with Charlie Wilson’s War. The last Sorkin scripted film we covered was The American President - you better hope that this is better than that (spoiler: it very much is)

It’s the early 1980s, and ‘Good Time’ Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a Democrat Congressman from Texas well known for his playboy lifestyle, is becoming obsessed with the dangers posed by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Encouraged by Christian socialite and campaigner Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), he teams up with maverick CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to mount a campaign of funding and arms supplies that help the mujahideen to defeat the Red Army and hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union (and then, much later, drive some different and literally catastrophic outcomes for the US).

As Charlie Wilson’s War opens, Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is sitting in a hot tub with a gaggle of strippers when he catches a glimpse of a TV news report about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. It is this report that piques his interest and kicks off the plot. However, Wilson is not supposed to be watching TV; he is supposed to be paying attention to his companion, one-time Miss Georgia and Playboy cover model Liz Wickersham. Wickersham is the proposed lead in an as-yet uncommissioned TV soap series, and Wilson has been brought on board to help provide ballast for her meetings with producers. This proposed soap is described by one of its backers as ‘Dallas, but set in Washington DC’.

You'd be forgiven for suspecting that Aaron Sorkin had invented this detail, because it sounds like an elevator pitch for an ‘80s version of The West Wing. But it wasn't an invention: Wilson really had been involved in an (unsuccessful) effort to get this show off the ground. It was just another absolutely real thing that happened in the amazing, bizarre and highly consequential life of Charles Nesbitt Wilson (who died in 2010).

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It’s characteristic of Sorkin that he picked up on this detail and used it to colourise Charlie Wilson’s War, suffusing an unglamorous story – weapons, funding committees, congressional horse-trading, global war – with all the styling and affect of an ‘80s soap. The film is all big hair, big gestures and big people; playboy congressmen, international businessmen, millionaire socialites and colourful spies.

Mike Nichols, in his last film, handles the Dallas vibe with customary flair. One bravura scene centres around two competing high-level conversations in Wilson’s Congressional office; a bevy of young female aides rush in and out with new information, while CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman, brilliant as usual) rushes out and back in, contrary-wise, and Sorkin’s nimble, cross-cutting dialogue veers back and forth. It’s like a top-tier production of an Alan Ayckbourn farce. One of the great joys of this film is hearing Sorkin’s dialogue in the mouths of movie stars of the wattage of Hanks, Roberts and Hoffman. They have not gone through The West Wing training school and don’t fall into the rote Joshua Malina breathless patter. They all turn it to their own, deliberate ends; they reinterpret Sorkin’s familiar rhythms, and fashion them into something completely different. It’s a terrific script and the cast take all the opportunities they can to really make it dance.