| Charlie Wilson's War | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Mike Nichols |
| Produced by | Tom Hanks Gary Goetzman Roger Birnbaum Douglas Wick Arthur Sarkissian Gary Barber |
| Screenplay by | Aaron Sorkin Nancy Meyers Charles Shyer |
| Based on | Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile |
| Starring | Tom Hanks Om Puri Julia Roberts Philip Seymour Hoffman Amy Adams Ned Beatty |
| Music by | James Newton Howard |
| Cinematography | Stephen Goldblatt |
| Editing by | John Bloom Paul Rubell |
| Studio | Relativity Media Participant Productions Playtone Spyglass Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) | December 21, 2007 |
| Running time | 100 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $75 million |
| Box office | $119,000,410 [1] |
Charlie Wilson's War is a 2007 American biographical comedy drama film recounting the true story of U.S. Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) who partnered with "bare knuckle attitude" CIA operative Gust Avrakotos to launch Operation Cyclone, a program to organize and support the Afghan mujahideen in their resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The film is adapted from George Crile's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.[2] It was directed by Mike Nichols, written by Aaron Sorkin, and stars Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Om Puri, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ned Beatty and Emily Blunt. It was nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, including "Best Motion Picture", but did not win in any category. Philip Seymour Hoffman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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In 1980, Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is more interested in partying than legislating, frequently throwing huge galas and staffing his congressional office with young, attractive women. His social life eventually brings about a federal investigation into allegations of his cocaine use, conducted by then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani as part of a larger investigation into congressional misconduct. The investigation results in no charge against Charlie.
A friend and romantic interest, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts), encourages Charlie to do more to help the Afghan people, and persuades Charlie to visit the Pakistani leadership. The Pakistanis complain about the inadequate support of the U.S. to oppose the Soviet Union, and they insist that Charlie visit a major Pakistan-based Afghan refugee camp. (This and other Afghan scenes were filmed in Morocco.[3]) Charlie is deeply moved by their misery and determination to fight, but is frustrated by the regional CIA personnel's insistence on a low key approach against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Charlie returns home to lead an effort to substantially increase funding to the mujahideen.
As part of this effort, Charlie befriends the maverick CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his understaffed Afghanistan group to find a better strategy, especially including a means to counter the Soviets' formidable Mi-24 helicopter gunship. This group was composed in part of members of the CIA's elite Special Activities Division, including a young paramilitary officer named Michael Vickers (Christopher Denham). As a result, Charlie's deft political bargaining for the necessary funding and Avrakotos' group's careful planning using those resources, such as supplying the guerrillas with FIM-92 Stinger missile launchers, turns the Soviet occupation into a deadly quagmire with their heavy fighting vehicles being destroyed at a crippling rate. The CIA's anti-communism budget evolves from $5 million to over $500 million (with the same amount matched by Saudi Arabia), startling several congressmen. This effort by Charlie ultimately evolves into a major portion of the U.S. foreign policy known as the Reagan Doctrine, under which the U.S. expanded assistance beyond just the mujahideen and began also supporting other anti-communist resistance movements around the world. Charlie states that senior Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury persuaded President Ronald Reagan to provide the Stingers to the Afghans: "Ironically, neither Gust nor Charlie was directly involved in the decision and claims any credit."[4]:419
Charlie follows Gust's guidance to seek support for post-Soviet occupation Afghanistan, but finds almost no enthusiasm in the U.S. government for even the modest measures he proposes. The film ends with Charlie receiving a major commendation for the support of the U.S. clandestine services, but his pride is tempered by his fears of what unintended consequences his secret efforts could yield in the future and the implications of U.S. disengagement from Afghanistan.
Charlie's "Angels"†
The film was originally set for release on December 25, 2007; but on November 30, 2007 the timetable was moved up to December 21, 2007. In its opening weekend, the film grossed $9.6 million in 2,575 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #4 at the box office.[5] It grossed a total of $119 million worldwide — $66.7 million in the United States and Canada and $52.3 million in other territories.[6]
Charlie Wilson's War received generally favorable reviews from critics. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 81% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 192 reviews.[7] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 69 out of 100, based on 39 reviews.[8]
Reagan-era officials, including former Under Secretary of Defense Fred Ikle, have criticized some elements of the film. The Washington Times reported that some have claimed that the film wrongly promotes the notion that the CIA-led operation funded Osama bin Laden and ultimately produced the September 11 attacks.[9] Other Reagan-era officials, however, have been more supportive of the film. Michael Johns, the former Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst and White House speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush, praised the film as "the first mass-appeal effort to reflect the most important lesson of America's Cold War victory: that the Reagan-led effort to support freedom fighters resisting Soviet oppression led successfully to the first major military defeat of the Soviet Union... Sending the Red Army packing from Afghanistan proved one of the single most important contributing factors in one of history's most profoundly positive and important developments."[10]
The film depicts the concern expressed by Charlie and Gust that Afghanistan was being neglected in the 1990s, following the Soviet withdrawal. In one of the film's final scenes, Gust dampens Charlie's enthusiasm over the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying "I'm about to give you an NIE that shows the crazies are rolling into Kandahar."
George Crile III, author of the book on which the film is based, wrote that the mujahideen's victory in Afghanistan ultimately opened a power vacuum for bin Laden: "By the end of 1993, in Afghanistan itself there were no roads, no schools, just a destroyed country - and the United States was washing its hands of any responsibility. It was in this vacuum that the Taliban and Osama bin Laden would emerge as the dominant players. It is ironic that a man who had almost nothing to do with the victory over the Red Army, Osama bin Laden, would come to personify the power of the jihad."[11]
While the film depicts Wilson as an immediate advocate for supplying the mujahideen with Stinger missiles, a former Reagan administration official recalls that he and Wilson, while advocates for the mujahideen, were actually initially "lukewarm" on the idea of supplying these missiles. Their opinion changed when they discovered that rebels were successful in downing Soviet gunships with them.[9] As such, they were actually not supplied until the second Reagan administration term, in 1987, and their provision was mostly advocated by Reagan defense officials and influential conservatives.[12][13][14]
The film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing," according to Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film maker with inside information from the production.[15] Citing the original screenplay, which was very different to the final product, in Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy Matthew Alford wrote that the film gave up "the chance to produce what at least had the potential to be the Dr. Strangelove of our generation".[16]
In early February, it was revealed that the film would not play in Russian theaters. The rights for the film were bought by Universal Pictures International (UPI) Russia. It was speculated that the film would not appear because of a certain point of view that depicted the Soviet Union unfavorably. UPI Russia head Yevgeny Beginin denied that, saying, "We simply decided that the film would not make a profit." Reaction from Russian bloggers, who had seen the film on pirated DVDs, was negative. One wrote: "The whole film shows Russians, or rather Soviets, as brutal killers."[17][18]
The film was released on DVD April 22, 2008; a DVD version and a HD DVD/DVD combo version are available. The extras include a making of featurette and a "Who is Charlie Wilson?" featurette, which profiles the real Charlie Wilson and features interviews with him and with Tom Hanks, Joanne Herring, Aaron Sorkin, and Mike Nichols. The HD DVD/DVD combo version also includes additional exclusive content.[19]
Wilson since recounted that, "I always, always, whenever a plane goes down, I always fear it is one of our missiles. Most of all I wanted to bloody the Red Army. I think the bloodying thereof had a great deal to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union."[20] He now surmises that some of the weapons probably wound up in the hands of the Taliban regime, which took power in Afghanistan and harbored Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, organizer of the September 11 attacks. "I feel guilty about it," he said. "I really do."
"Those things happen," Wilson said of wartime weapons that wind up in the wrong hands. "How are you going to defeat the Red Army without a gun? You can't blame the Marines for teaching Lee Harvey Oswald how to shoot." Wilson, who did not seek re-election to Congress in 1996 after serving 24 years, now believes he could have worked harder to steer Afghanistan away from the course that led it to today. "The part that I'll take to my grave with guilt is that ... I didn't stay the course and stay there and push and drive the other members of Congress nuts pushing for a mini-Marshall Plan," he said. "And I let myself be frustrated and discouraged by the fact that (the Afghan) leadership was so fragmented that we were unable to do the things we needed to do, like clear the mines, like furnish them millions of tons of fertilizer to be able to replant the crops."
The policy was later embraced by Reagan administration foreign policy and defense officials, who escalated conflict with Soviet-supported governments. Jimmy Carter — who had already served his term previous to Reagan — distanced himself from the policy's broader application, and was a vocal opponent of U.S. aid to such "nation building" movements. Congressional Democrats also largely opposed the broader application of the Reagan Doctrine.[21]
Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, allegedly stated in an interview that he claimed was illegitimate and fabricated that the U.S. effort to aid the mujahideen was preceded by an effort to delibrately draw the Soviets into a costly and presumably distracting Vietnam War-like conflict. In a 1998 interview[22] with the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski is said to have recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would... That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, "We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."[23][24] He maintains that this interview is simply untrue and that there were no arms sent to the Afghan insurgents until the week after the Soviet invasion. He suggested that the latter claim is easily verifiable, saying "the records are open!"[25] Two declassified documents signed by Carter shortly before the invasion do authorize the provision "unilaterally or through third countries as appropriate support to the Afghan insurgents either in the form of cash or non-military supplies" and the "worldwide" distribution of "non-attributable propaganda" to "expose" the leftist Afghan government as "despotic and subservient to the Soviet Union" and to "publicize the efforts of the Afghan insurgents to regain their country's sovereignty," but the records also show that the provision of arms to the rebels did not begin until 1980.[26][27] According to Eric Alterman of The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one.[28]
Jimmy Carter reacted with "open-mouthed shock" to the Russian invasion, and began promptly arming the Afghan insurgents.[29] Vice-President Walter Mondale famously declared: "I cannot understand -- it just baffles me -- why the Soviets these last few years have behaved as they have. Maybe we have made some mistakes with them. Why did they have to build up all these arms? Why did they have to go into Afghanistan? Why can't they relax just a little bit about Eastern Europe? Why do they try every door to see if it is locked?"[30] Before the invasion, the Soviets staged conversations with the Afghan leadership several times, suggesting that they had no desire to intervene, even as the Politburo was—with much hesitation—considering such an intervention. They had apparently orchestrated these meetings in a manner that would allow the Americans to easily intercept them.[31] Though some have argued that US financial assistance to Afghan dissidents, including Islamic and other militants, prior to the invasion; along with a Soviet desire to protect the leftist Afghan government, helped convince the Russians to intervene, the Russians brutally murdered the Afghan President and his son, replacing him with a puppet regime, immediately after the invasion for fear that the US had secretly been collaborating with him.[31]
In 2008, Canadian journalist and politician Arthur Kent sued the makers of the film, claiming that they had used material he produced in the 1980s without obtaining the proper authorization.[32] On September 19, 2008, Kent announced that he had reached a settlement with the film's producers and distributors, and that he was "very pleased" with the terms of the settlement, which remain confidential.[33]
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