IMDB list ‘biography’ and ‘drama’ as the genres for this movie, but this definitely one of the better comedies I’ve seen in a long while. I was expecting a pretty serious political movie, but this story is so absurd it would have been funny even without all the great jokes this movie has to offer. And considering how this movie is based on a true story which has had some pretty serious effects on recent history, one can only conclude that this is an interesting movie in every sense of the word.

Charlie Wilson’s War is about Texas congressman Charlie Wilson and how he manages to organize and finance the Afghan rebels fighting against the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980′s. Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts play lead roles, so I have no idea why this movie pretty much flew in under the radar here in The Netherlands. Wilson may not be well-known here, but we have soldiers stationed in Afghanistan and the effects of Wilson’s act are definitely global in scale. But most of all it’s a rather remarkable movie.

Hanks plays Wilson, a congressman with a taste for whiskey, women and drugs. After a visit to a refugee camp in Pakistan he decides to help the Afghan people and starts pulling strings. He just happens to be on all the right commissions, and the movie follows his efforts which ultimately result in the defeat of the Soviet army in 1989. It’s no small feat that Hanks manages to portray Wilson as both a boozing womanizer and a dedicated idealist. There are tons of great bits of dialog, especially between Wilson and CIA operative Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman).

Charlie Wilson’s War does not connect the dots between Wilson’s era and the rise of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, but it does contain a critical note or two. It does focus on the absurdity of how a single rather insignificant politician can start a billion dollar war, and the colorful characters he has to deal with in doing so. It shows Wilson as quite a character himself, vices and all, something that very few biographies do.