We just went and saw Charlie Wilson’s War, which as written by Aaron Sorkin, the main guy behind the West Wing, and so I should have know that it would be funny, involving and cleverly political.
It was a damn funny piece of movie making (the opening scene has the protagonist sitting naked in a jacuzzi with another guy and 3 naked girls, trying to ask a guy who’s trashed on cocaine to turn the volume up on the TV so he can listen to something that’s just caught his eye) but the more you look at it the more you realise that it uses the humor of the social situations to mask the seriousness of the underlying story and it’s messages, giving them the chance to sneak into your brain while your guard is down.
Turns out it’s about America’s short sightedness (initially not wanting to fight the Russians because they didn’t want to seem too overt in their actions, and then having backed the Afghani’s in driving the Russians out, withdrawing all support and leaving the country to those who would eventually flood America with heroin, and blow up the world trade centers).
And how one man can change things, if only for a little while.