This sharply written political comedy stars Tom Hanks as a 1980s womanising, whiskey-gulping, senator, who finds himself the middle man in an American effort to fund the war in Afghanistan. His financial backing, scary socialite millionaire Joane Herring (a heavily made up Julia Roberts) sends him to the refugee camps on the Pakistani borders in order to further his mission. Although the movie fails largely to acknowledge the huge consequences of the war's aftermath, Charlie Wilson's War for the most part contains enough zingy one-liners and larger-than-life characters to please audiences. Although Roberts and Hanks have attracted the lion's share of publicity for the film, it is Philip Seymour Hoffman who steals the show. Playing a brash and hilariously frank CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, Hoffman executes some of the film's funniest lines with effortless panache.
Review of Charlie Wilson's War
