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W.

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Oliver Stone's "W." is one of the year's most absorbing films, and that's because, as the tagline suggests, it reveals that George W. Bush has been greatly misunderestimated. Watching this film, we see not the forty-third President of the United States, the former Governor of Texas, or even a politician in general. From my perspective, we're being told about an insecure man who reaches too far in an attempt to earn his father's approval. This movie is not a political commentary--it's a character study. Better still, it's a character study that's more or less historically accurate, with Stone and writer Stanley Weisner relying on published works and in-depth reports for the screenplay. Liberties were obviously taken; after all, there's no way anyone could know exactly what was said behind closed doors. But all the basic scenarios are well documented, which is to say that the film never once felt contrived. The end result is a compelling, complex, and occasionally funny examination of a person who always has something to prove.

Josh Brolin is perfectly cast as the title character, flawlessly capturing the mannerisms and diction we've become so familiar with over the last eight years. We see him as a determined but incompetent man who claws his way up to the presidency without the necessary skills. Pay close attention to scenes featuring W. in staff meetings; it quickly becomes clear that political heavyweights like Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), Karl Rove (Toby Jones), Condoleeza Rice (Thandie Newton), Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), and even the infuriated Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) are making all the important decisions. As for W., well, let us not forget that the real President Bush publicly declared that his faith in God influenced his foreign policy decisions. In the film, he ends every meeting by having everyone bow their heads in prayer; I expected nothing less from a man who found God at age forty, when he was in the thick of his AA treatment. In 1999, he tells his pastor (Stacy Keach) that, even though he had no desire to be President of the United States, it was God's will that he campaign.

The film also takes some time to develop the relationship between W. and his wife, Laura (Elizabeth Banks), who he met at a friend's barbecue while running for Congress for the first time. In the film, Laura Bush is sweet, understanding, and patient, and it's easy to believe the love she feels for her husband. She seems to regard W. the same way a mother regards a baby taking its first steps: She encourages him endlessly, and she's always there to support him if he should trip and fall somewhere along the way. At that pivotal stage of W.'s life, the world of politics is so new and challenging that he needs all the support he can get.

One of the most interesting things about this film is the structure. Rather than a complete chronological biography, Stone opted for non-linear fragments, starting in 2002 but then flashing back to 1966 before going to 2003, and so on and so forth. He also chose to omit specific events in Bush's life; we see neither the 2000 nor the 2004 election, and we're spared the tragedies of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina. This will undoubtedly frustrate certain audiences. I didn't have a problem with it, and that's because this film is about his personality, not his political career. As the pieces of the story come together, we discover the man behind the president: he was a C-average college student who spent most of his time getting drunk; he gambled and went through women; he seemed to take no interest in holding a job; he was always at odds with his disapproving parents, who seemed to favor his younger brother, Jeb.

There's a moment in a 1970s flashback when W. comes home drunk and announces that he was accepted into Harvard Business School. When his mother (Ellen Burstyn) demands to know why he never told them, he admits that he never intended to go--he just wanted to prove to his father (James Cromwell) that he could do it. This doesn't please Poppy Bush very much, and that's because it was his own string pulling that got his son accepted in the first place. There's a definite rivalry between the two, one that W. drags all the way to 2003, the year he decided to invade Iraq. Colin Powell, who in 1991 oversaw Operation Desert Strom along with Dick Cheney, makes it clear that Saddam Hussein had no hand in the 9/11 attacks. That doesn't matter, decides W.; he wants to finish the job his father failed to finish back when he was President. Besides, there's evidence to suggest that Hussein is concealing weapons of mass destruction.

But I'm not convinced he actually believed this to be true. It seemed more likely that he was just going along with what others were saying. Oliver Stone describes George W. Bush as a Western hero so one-tracked, he refuses to back down even when he's wrong. "There's just no examination of the interior life," he said in an "L.A. Weekly" interview. "He doesn't look back. He doesn't regret. He doesn't seem to read very much--or think very much--about what he does." Some may be compelled to take pity on W. after seeing this movie; it paints a picture of a man who wanted nothing more than to own a baseball team. Others, I'm sure, will not have their minds changed one bit. Whatever your reaction, I personally feel that this is one of the year's best films, presenting us with a fascinating character study rather than a scathing political commentary.

To be honest, I am a liberal who went to this movie expecting to see a funny parody of George W. Bush along the lines of a Michael Moore film. While I did laugh at times during the film, I left the movie feeling strangely sympathetic towards poor W. Stone plays it surprisingly straight, presenting Bush as the kid who had trouble finding his way as a grown-up. The main focus here is on Bush's relationship with his father, particularly his efforts to constantly try to please George the elder and falling short, especially when compared with his brother Jeb. Stone effectively weaves in flashblacks from Bush's college and early adult years with his first term as President. Some major events, including the 2000 election and September 11th, are given almost no attention, but again, that's not the main focus of the film.

The movie is superbly cast. Josh Brolin does an amazing job as W.; he manages to capture Bush's mannerisms in a portrayal that is uncannily accurate without becoming a caricature. Then there's James Cromwell, who looks and sounds nothing like George Bush senior but somehow manages to depict the former President perfectly just the same. Most of the other supporting roles are excellent as well, from Richard Dreyfuss as Cheney to Jeffrey Wright as Colin Powell; the one exception was Thandie Newton's Condoleezza Rice, who DID feel more like a caricature.

No matter which side of the aisle you find yourself on, this is an engrossing movie with the potential to appeal to many different types of people, and I definitely recommend it.

One thing that immediately struck me when W came out was the odd timing. Why on earth would a filmmaker choose to put out a movie on the Bush presidency so close to its end when the end result will be a movie that lacks closure and feels unfinished? Had the movie been spectacular, this could have been forgiven, but in many ways W. is a truly forgettable movie. I thinks it's easy enough to leave politics out of whether or not you like this movie. I suppose if you don't like Bush, chances are you'll like W., but that's not really the point. I know people who despise Richard Nixon, but loved Frost/Nixon.

The movie follows two separate timelines and jumps back and forth between the two. The first begins with college era Bush, the other begins right after 9/11. There's no real point to splitting the movie up in such a way, expect that had the story been told from start to finish, the movie might had been even worse. There are other continuity issues that cause serious problems as well. The most glaring issue is that many of the infamous "Bushisms" make appearances in the movie, but never in the context of when Bush actually said them. Someone made the decision to cram in as many of them as possible, whether or not it made sense to do so.

The movie's most serious issue though is that it can't decide whether or not it wants to be a parody/caricature, or a serious movie....a comedy, or a drama. Bush's character jumps back and forth between the two throughout the movie. Dick Cheney and Condi Rice seem like they're straight out of an SNL skit, while Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld are played in a serious way. This is incredibly distracting and I think it speaks to the fundamental problem with this movie and that's the fact that the 'story' Oliver Stone wanted to tell doesn't make for a good movie. It's just not that interesting. Maybe Stone thought that because aspects of Bush are comedic for lack of a better term, they would make for a good movie, but that's just not the case. If you've paid more than just passing attention to the news during Bush's presidency, you won't learn anything new. If you haven't been paying attention...first of all what's wrong with you? Second, this would be a horrible place to start if you want to learn about the last 8 years.

Not too bad a bad movie (and not too inaccurate, I suspect) but at the end, a wasted opportunity. Brolin's performance is OK and he does most of Bush's mannerisms fairly well but I failed the understand the need for the cartoonish close-ups Stone gives him throughout the movie or for some scenes like the one showing him having a lenghty conversation with Laura when he's in the toilet (what was the point there ?). Personally I would have been a lot more interested to see what happened in W's own election night rather than in the one his father lost to Clinton but the way Stone handles the meetings between W and his staff in which crucial decisions were discussed in almost trivial and casual ways and which later brougth such dire consequences throughout the world, are more than enough reason to recommend this movie. Most people in the audience will come away from W with the certainty that Jeb would have been a much better president but with the repercusions to the Bush name after these 8 years, it is fair to say it is highly improbable we'll ever get to find out. The biggest WMD shown inthis movie ?: a pretzel. Now THAT was ironic.

It's not that I don't believe that every single one of the incidents in W. didn't take place, it's just that Oliver Stone discredits himself by making Bush 43 look SO unrelievedly puerile and SO utterly incompetent that Bush almost gains the viewer's sympathy---a difficult feat, considering that Dubya had to be most inept and unfit man ever to sit in the Oval Office, at least since James Buchanan.

Stone's "Junior" starts out life as a drunken frat boy who is constantly bailed out of trouble by his supercompetent Daddy, and Junior largely remains that kid all his life, except for the fact that he quits drinking somewhere along the way. Regardless of going dry, W.'s mind never sharpens. He never truly matures and he never adopts a measure of success other than that of his own advancement. By his own lights, Stone's George W. Bush is the most phenomenally successful man in the world. And I'm sure that's true in real life, anyway.

Unfortunately for America, Bush's dream job was to be the Commissioner of Baseball, not the Commander-in-Chief. He runs his White House and manages his foreign policy with all the subtlety of Leo Durocher and Billy Martin's three-headed love child.

Bush's Administration is the hideout of cultured barbarians and frat Nazis whose main focus in life seems to be keeping themselves the main focus of everything. Surrounding himself with smarter sycophants like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney (whom he calls "Vice" rather than "Dick," as if it matters), Bush sets his compass by that most egotistical of lodestones---What God wants. It's incredible how well W. knows just what God wants, considering he's never even seen the Guy.

With no intellectual curiosity and little real intellect, Stone's W. is a frightening nitwit who has his hand on The Button. Whether the real one is less of a nincompoop, Oliver Stone has set the biofilm benchmark on this President so low that the film adaptation of Bush's seemingly-eventual War Crimes Trial will show him in a better light.

That's tough to do.

W" a new film by noted left-leaning director Oliver Stone, ( JFK - Director's Cut (Two-Disc Special Edition); Nixon - The Election Year Edition; Born on the Fourth of July (Special Edition); Salvador (Special Edition)) is the first semi-autobiographical film to be made about a sitting United States President: George W. Bush, of course. With careful attention to timing, it reaches theaters as the 2008 U.S. Presidential race is in its hot, final, attention-hogging days. Now, anybody who knows Stone's characteristic previous work might well expect an incendiary, one-sided, unsubstantiated, hostile, even paranoid view of our 43d President. However, Stone has here delivered a rather fair, unprejudiced view, one that even encourages a certain amount of sympathy for the movie's protagonist.

Stone has used a star-laden cast to tell this story. James Brolin, fresh off his triumph in No Country for Old Men, delivers a strong, nuanced performance as the title character; as in "No Country," he plays another Texan, this time one by choice. James Cromwell is outstanding as "Poppy," our 41st President, George Herbert Walker Bush; Ellen Burstyn does well as our former First Lady, W's mom, Barbara Bush. Richard Dreyfuss does a remarkable turn as Vice President Dick Cheney. Scott Glenn is Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Ioan Griffith is British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Stacy Keach is scarcely recognizable as W's favorite preacher Earle Hudd. Bruce McGill is an oily George Tenet, head of Central Intelligence Agency. Thandie Newton scatters some grace notes as Condoleezza Rice, our current Secretary of State. And Jeffrey Wright captures the dignity and intelligence of Colin Powell, former UN Ambassador, Secretary of State, and five star general: the man who won Gulf War I for Bush 41.

Stone seems to have stuck pretty closely this time out to what anyone who watches CNN will know. He should get high marks for accuracy. Unfortunately, aside from a few key early scenes, watching this film is like watching CNN: information is delivered by what amounts to talking heads. It's a quintessential all talk no action film, and some will find it, surprisingly enough for Stone's work, dull. In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as those living tableaus (tableaux vivant in the original French) that used to be popular: at any moment I expected a character to come out in colonial dress, announce he was George Washington, cross the Delaware River, represented by rippling silk, and throw that coin. Recommended only for political junkies with a high tolerance for talking heads.

The film has a structure similar to Stone's "Nixon", jumping from the present to the past and then back again. The scenes that occur during the presidency focus almost entirely on the Iraq War, while W's biography begins at his Yale fraternity hazing. James Brolin does a brillant job capturing W's mannerisms and good ole boy way of talking. The youthful W is depicted as a hard drinking womanizer who can't hold a job and seems to have no direction in life. After a "born again" religious experience he cleans up his act and begins to have political ambitions. But apparent throughout are W's "daddy issues" and how he feels Poppy Bush prefers brother Jeb over him. I particularly enjoyed the dream sequence with his father near the end of the movie.

This is closer to a bio-pic than a hachet job. But it is also very much a political satire. The film had the audience laughing throughout and the jokes were mostly at W's expense. It does attempt to explain the psychological motivations behind W's actions and some viewers may leave feeling sympathy for him. But the overall portrait that emerges is of a clownish bumbler in way over his head and being manipulated by Cheney, Rumsfield and Rove into a war with sinister motivations and a tragic outcome.

Not everything that Stone tries here works and I would have preferred a linear timeline and more broadly focused account of W's inept administration that included 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, etc. But the film is entertaining enough and will serve to confirm what most Americans already know - that under W this country has definitely been heading in the wrong direction.

While I am not (to put it mildly) a fan of George W. Bush, "W" sparked unexpected sympathy in me. I found myself thinking, "He's not a terrible guy...if only he had stayed with just owning the Texas Rangers!" This alone is a considerable feat, and I applaud the movie's ability to portray such a polarizing figure in a sincere, human light. However, in many ways, "W" was disappointing. I hoped to see a biographical film offering insight into the man and his life story, but what I got was a movie focused mainly on the Iraq War, with the message that the war was Bush's way of proving himself to (or one-upping) the father he could never seem to please. It is an interesting and believable angle, but the film's narrow focus leaves parts of Bush's story glaringly absent.

The plot bounces between the Iraq War and earlier parts of Bush's life, starting with his wild college days. We don't glean anything about the significant events of his childhood, such as the death of his little sister Robin, which is sure to have impacted him greatly. Even the most pivotal moment in Bush's presidency--9/11--is missing. I found it strange that there is a scene depicting the famous "pretzel incident," but only a few brief references to 9/11 during meetings on Iraq.

The movie's strongest point is Josh Brolin's performance, which successfully captures Bush's mix of swagger, recklessness, charm, and simple-mindedness. While the film drives home the point that Bush isn't the brightest crayon in the box, Brolin portrays a man with whom we can sympathize, as he struggles to fill the very big shoes bequeathed to him by his dad. Bush is painted as a person with good intentions surrounded by people who are eager to manipulate him. Jeffrey Wright and Richard Dreyfuss do well as Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, who are shown butting heads over the war. Cheney is clearly the villain, talking openly about the need to seize Iraq's oil--and to stay there, with no exit strategy. These may very well have been Cheney's intentions, but it is still conjecture that he actually said this, and it detracts from the movie. Thandie Newton's performance as Condoleezza Rice was unconvincing, conveying none of Rice's strong personality. Maybe I'm a little biased, though; I was hoping they'd pick Simbi Khali (Nina from "3rd Rock from the Sun"), who is such a dead ringer for Condi.

The film is not what it could have been, lacking the level of substance the subject deserves. While "W." is worth seeing, I would wait until it comes out on DVD or hits the discount theaters.

Here's an odd little movie. It's a kitchen sink drama about a sitting President of the United States. Yes, it's got stock footage of the Iraq war, and an all-star casting playing members of the Cabinet, and it's got a greatest-hits collection of everyone's favorite George W. Bush misquotes. But it's also a sad, downbeat little drama about a man-child who failed at everything he ever did, and then became President just to prove a point to his father -- and failed at that, too.

Oliver Stone's movie has been praised so far for not being overtly political, and for being somewhat sympathetic to its subject. Still, the director doesn't pull punches on showing "W"'s hard-drinking past, and he lists all of the man's life failures prior to becoming owner of the Texas Rangers. There are a few trademark manipulative Stone moments -- for example, a pan over the infamous "Mission Accomplished" poster quickly jump-cuts to a montage of Iraq insurgent bombshells and wounded veterans. We also get the moment where the Prseident nearly chokes on a pretzel while watching college football on TV. And, even though Bush did win the 2004 election, the movie stops short of that in order to end on a surprisingly downbeat note. This movie is sympathetic to Bush, but it's also quite critical. There's a fleeting image of John McCain, too, lest we forget the choice we have to make in a couple of weeks.

The cast is almost uniformly superb. Josh Brolin, playing Bush both in his hard-living 20s and his Presidential late 50s, carries off the role so effortlessly that it's easy to overlook how hard he had to work to make this movie work. And it does work, thanks to Brolin.

The aces of the supporting cast include James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush -- giving the man a true gravitas that pop culture denied him 15 years ago, when he was being parodied by Dana Carvey and "The Simpsons". Jeffrey Wright is heroic as Colin Powell. Finally, Richard Dreyfuss's interpretation of Dick Cheney merits serious Oscar consideration. No over-the-top trademark Dreyfuss moments here. He is superb lurking in the shadows and lording over a map of oil wells in the Middle East.

I only had two disappoinments walking out of the theater. One was the limited scope of the movie. There's no mention of what history will really recall about the Bush presidency: the questions surrounding the 2000 and 2004 elections; the moment of triumph at Yankee Stadium shortly following 9/11; the Hurricane Katrina debacle. Of course, by including all that Stone would have been wide open to charges of political bias, and then this wouldn't have been a family film about a son vainly struggling to impress his father.

The other disappointment was Thandie Newton. With a vicious sneer on her face and a strange choice of enunciation, her Condi Rice is more a caricature than a portrayal. Had the movie been more overtly political or had the other supporting actors also mocked their characters, I might not have noticed. But here, Thandie was as overshadowed by the rest of the cast as has George W. Bush been overhshadowed by his father.

All movie attempts to present Bush Jr. as a cheap shadow of his daddy, Bush Sr., look mostly like the funny bubbling of own kid nasty sometimes but always "own bastard".

Oliver Stone's speculations of Iraq and Afghanistan wars would much more convincingly sound if for start the predominant majority of American voters reject, once and forever, a non-stoppable usage of their personal cars in big cities to ease dependence on energy sources well feeding terrorists back on the American soil de-facto absorbing increasingly for "humanitarian reasons" new waves of terror breeding seed.