W.

Release Date:	October 17, 2008
Directed by:	Oliver Stone
Genre:	Biography/Comedy/Drama
Starring:	Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Scott Glenn, Toby Jones, Jeffrey Wright & Thandie Newton
Approx. Runtime:	131 min.
MPAA Rating:	PG-13 for Language Including Sexual References, Some Alcohol Abuse, Smoking and Brief Disturbing War Images

“So the question remains, Mr. Stone, why make this movie?”The simple story of a simple man . . .

That is the premise of Oliver Stone’s W., one of the years most hotly anticipated and controversial films. There’s no sugar coating the matter at hand: though the reign of the Bush Administration will soon see itself to an end, its disastrous side effects will continue to haunt America and its citizens for decades to come. Rather than throwing gasoline on the still flaming fire, Mr. Stone makes it his duty to douse the flames with surprising sincerity. It is, however, in his hungry desire to avoid controversy, that W. begins its downward spiral of tonal disorientation and narrative disjointedness.

In fairness, W. (yes, dubya) is hardly the cartoon its bloated advertizing campaign has made it out to be . . . or is it? Though Mr. Stone labors to portray his sitting subject as something more than the mumbling, bumbling idiot public perception has made him out to be, his premise is a pitifully shaky one. Played remarkably well by No Country for Old Men star Josh Brolin, the George W. Bush of Oliver Stone’s picture seems focused solely on earning the love and respect of his father–a message hammered home time and again without power of conviction or a shred of sophistication. Think, as Mr. Stone may, that he is making a biopic about the consequences of fame and fortune in the liberal backdrop of the American political hierarchy, W. isn’t gripping enough to work as a drama or intelligent enough to work as a satire.

The film opens on a promising note with Brolin’s Bush heading up the 2002 strategy session concerning the original concoction of the Iraqi conflict and the White House’s controversial policy of pre-emptive striking. This gives way to flaccid flashback and the pictures gradually emerging sense of structure, allowing Stone and co-writer Stanley Weiser the opportunity to visit Bush during various periods over the course of his life including his freshman year at Yale, his first encounter his would-be-wife Laura, straight up until his election campaign of the late nineties, following the devastating downfall of his fathers own campaign. Absent here in its complete entirety are the pivotal events of the years 2000 through 2002, in which the sitting presidents political will was put to the ultimate test in the disastrous aftermath of the September 11^th attacks upon the city of New York.

To that end, Bush finds God and loses his addiction to the bottle in a single earth shattering epiphany leading to his subsequent rise and fall in the shadow of the Iraqi invasion and the psychological side effects of its catastrophic unfurling into American political infamy and disaster.

So what’s Oliver Stone’s new movie actually good for? Well, for one thing, it is seeped in a broad array of colorful secondary performances from an all star cast including the likes of Richard Dreyfuss, who deserves serious Oscar consideration for his stand out performance as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney–of whom he isn’t so much a clone as he is a human embodiment. In paled comparison, Mr. Dreyfuss’ co-stars–Glenn, Newton, Banks–scramble foolishly as they attempt to work up their desperate celebrity impersonations to the best of their lesser acting ability with little or no success beyond your garden variety Saturday Night Live sketch of yonder. Ms. Newton’s Condolezza Rice impression in particular is among the most misguided in recent movie memory.

Perhaps Mr. Stone’s ridiculous political caricature is his own abstract way of reasoning with his subject matter. Making a dramatic film about a sitting president is an awkward task. In spite of Mr. Brolin and Mr. Dreyfuss’ valiant efforts, I think it goes without saying that historians won’t be likely to consult in a film that plays more like some half-baked editorial cartoon than it does the portrait of a man misunderstood it claims so boldly to be.

So the question remains, Mr. Stone, why make this movie? Moreover, why now in this hour of international crises? While never as lacquered or as overpriced as his Any Given Sunday or World Trade Center, W. is, in the end, similarly empty. Even as Stone clears his throat and approaches some of the most urgent and painful issues of our present social and economic circumstances–with occasional fireworks of impressive theoretic–he would seem to have nothing to say or add to his material. Making W. feel, for the moment, remarkably . . . irrelevant.