The most remarkable thing about Oliver Stone's W. is that it isn't a hatchet job. Coming from full-time liberal and part-time paranoid muckraker Stone, the film would seem to exist as a calculated -- albeit, ill-timed piece of propaganda, a chance to come out swinging at President George W. Bush, a man who virtually from his first day in office was made a scapegoat for all the world's problems. Stone, a man who never let accuracy get in the way of his interpretation of history, certainly wouldn't be expected to be kind to a president who successfully led the country in a decidedly conservative direction. But in W., Stone seems to be bending over backwards to be fair and impartial, and even respectful of the 43rd president. The key word here would be "seems," because as the film unfolds it often isn't clear if Stone is looking at Bush with benevolent compassion or with an icy, sarcastic gaze. Some scenes in W. are so painfully sincere you can't help but to wonder if Stone wasn't laughing to himself as he filmed them.
Perhaps the film would have been better if had been a hatchet job, or, as the ads implied, a comedy. At least, it might have given it enough of a jolt to keep viewers awake. Liberals could nod their heads in glee at each attack and conservatives could become filled with self-satisfied rage at each inaccuracy. As is, W. is benign and banal. Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser don't hold back in their attempt to place blame for the Iraqi war on Bush and his cohorts, but at the same time they resist trying to paint Bush as an evil demon or an incompetent stooge. They conclude that while most of Bush's motives for the war were pure, the ultimate reason was to grab control of all that oil, pure and simple. But they do also fall back on the trite and tedious argument that Bush's actions were all rooted in his feelings of inadequacy and his inability to win the approval of his father, President George W.H. Bush. Thirty years of political chaos in the Middle East, the tragedy of 9/11 and the threat of further terrorism were of secondary concern. Scenes of Bush planning the Iraqi War are counterpointed with flashbacks of Bush's rough and tumble rise to power, with a few silly baseball-themed dream sequences tossed in for no apparent reason. The flip-flopping between then and now never really works as anything other than as a plotting device.
Josh Brolin plays Bush with force and gusto, though you never forget that he is an actor playing a part. It is like he is doing a caricature on "Saturday Night Live," hitting the character's high points and obvious moments, but never convincingly becoming the man himself. Indeed, at times it seems like he's auditioning for a role in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. At least he is more convincing than Anthony Hopkins was as the title character in Stone's NIXON. But like NIXON, there really isn't much point to W.; you just can't sum up a man's life good, evil or indifferent in just two hours, let alone gage his historical importance. And as an examination of the Iraqi War, it is like (to use one of Stone's baseball metaphors) trying to call a game in the middle of the fourth inning. Ending somewhere around the end of Bush's first term, the film is as inconclusive about the war as it is vague about Bush himself.
W. was not much of a success at the box office. This is probably because conservatives avoided the film sensing that it would be a hatchet job. While liberals avoided seeing it because they heard it wasn't. As for the vast majority of viewers who swung to neither extreme, perhaps they avoided it out of a feeling of fair play; wisely believing that history is best viewed from a reasonable distance and with a reasonable degree of objectivity.
Perhaps the film would have been better if had been a hatchet job, or, as the ads implied, a comedy. At least, it might have given it enough of a jolt to keep viewers awake. Liberals could nod their heads in glee at each attack and conservatives could become filled with self-satisfied rage at each inaccuracy. As is, W. is benign and banal. Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser don't hold back in their attempt to place blame for the Iraqi war on Bush and his cohorts, but at the same time they resist trying to paint Bush as an evil demon or an incompetent stooge. They conclude that while most of Bush's motives for the war were pure, the ultimate reason was to grab control of all that oil, pure and simple. But they do also fall back on the trite and tedious argument that Bush's actions were all rooted in his feelings of inadequacy and his inability to win the approval of his father, President George W.H. Bush. Thirty years of political chaos in the Middle East, the tragedy of 9/11 and the threat of further terrorism were of secondary concern. Scenes of Bush planning the Iraqi War are counterpointed with flashbacks of Bush's rough and tumble rise to power, with a few silly baseball-themed dream sequences tossed in for no apparent reason. The flip-flopping between then and now never really works as anything other than as a plotting device.
Josh Brolin plays Bush with force and gusto, though you never forget that he is an actor playing a part. It is like he is doing a caricature on "Saturday Night Live," hitting the character's high points and obvious moments, but never convincingly becoming the man himself. Indeed, at times it seems like he's auditioning for a role in THE DUKES OF HAZZARD. At least he is more convincing than Anthony Hopkins was as the title character in Stone's NIXON. But like NIXON, there really isn't much point to W.; you just can't sum up a man's life good, evil or indifferent in just two hours, let alone gage his historical importance. And as an examination of the Iraqi War, it is like (to use one of Stone's baseball metaphors) trying to call a game in the middle of the fourth inning. Ending somewhere around the end of Bush's first term, the film is as inconclusive about the war as it is vague about Bush himself.
W. was not much of a success at the box office. This is probably because conservatives avoided the film sensing that it would be a hatchet job. While liberals avoided seeing it because they heard it wasn't. As for the vast majority of viewers who swung to neither extreme, perhaps they avoided it out of a feeling of fair play; wisely believing that history is best viewed from a reasonable distance and with a reasonable degree of objectivity.