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W. - flawed, but better than you may have heard
One of the biggest mistakes people make when reviewing movies, professionally or unprofessionally, is that they review what the movie is about. They don’t review what is up there on the screen.
So when I see Oliver Stone’s W. getting dismissive grades, I can’t help but wonder if people are reviewing W. the man instead of W. the movie. The latter does not deserve that much scorn.
Like Stone’s Nixon, W. is an earnest attempt to examine a very unpopular president. It is not a hatchet job, nor even an excuse to point and laugh. That would have been too easy. The film tries to understand how President Bush ascended to great heights, only to descend to perilous lows. And in that, the film is a limited success.
Far and away, the best thing about the movie is W. himself. Josh Brolin probably won’t get an Oscar nomination for playing the president, but he deserves one. In a role that could have so easily been a sniggering caricature, Brolin gives Bush fascinating layers of personality. The actor makes Bush’s transformation form knockabout partier to the leader of the free world convincing and compelling. His range is especially impressive. One need only think of his work in No Country for Old Men and marvel at the transformation. W. is worth seeing for Brolin alone.
The rest of the cast is solid across the board, including James Cromwell as the elder Bush, Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush, Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush and Toby Jones as Karl Rove. My highest kudos go to Jeffrey Wright, playing former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Richard Dreyfuss, playing Vice President Dick Cheney. When the two of them square off while trying to make the case for the invasion of Iraq, the scene is electrifying and chilling.
And yet, as is his wont, Stone gives in to the worse angels of his nature. One of his central problems as a director is that, as skilled as he is visually, he doesn’t trust himself. Even after he makes an interesting point, he keeps beating on it until the horse is not only dead but desecrated.
The major narrative thrust of W. is that whether he succeeded or failed, “Junior” was trying to live up to and stand up to his father, who never thought his son was good enough. There may well be some validity to that theory, but Stone overplays it loudly. By the time dear old dad is showing up in W’s nightmare, the pop psychology has gone from fascinating to embarrassing.
When the movies about 9-11 came out, many people greeted them with cries of “too soon.” Ironically, Stone, who made one of those movies (the excellent World Trade Center), has now made a film that has indeed come out too soon.
One of the problems of this film about our current president, is that it’s about our current president. Yes, it’s impressive that Stone very quickly pulled together this film in only the space of a few months, so that he could release it before Election Day, but as a result, the film lacks the historical distance - and the ending - it needs to be a fully-rounded portrait.
In Stone’s haste, the director has made a fascinating mess. Maybe that was inevitable, considering both the subject and the filmmaker.
GRADE: B
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