"W." Review - Written by Dr. Royce Clemens

W.
***1/2 out of 4
Rated PG-13
Directed by Oliver Stone

Something that plays a great part of Oliver Stone’s W. is the battle with alcohol that our forty-third President had in his youth. Sure he beat the bottle, but he traded up his addictions. Power took the place of booze. There comes a point where President Bush attempts to sell Congress on the War in Iraq during one of his State of the Union addresses. People who would go on to vociferously oppose him like Ted Kennedy, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd all rise at the end and give Bush a standing ovation. An entire roomful of enablers giving him a pat on the back.

It is the most telling moment of Stone’s film. Yes he no longer drank, and yet God did not grant George W. Bush the serenity to accept the things he could not change, the courage to change the things he could… Or the wisdom to know the difference.

Yes, the hype is true and W. is indeed a fair portrayal of what many have called the worst president in our nation’s history. But therein lies the rub. Much like the Sarah Palin, it is hard to accurately speak about Bush without sounding condescending. Stone looks at Bush with pity. Whether or not that’s more brutal than lashing out and calling him an idiot, I shall leave to each individual viewer. Stone seems to make his points finely and it is the first time he’s effectively grasped subtlety since… Well… Ever.

Josh Brolin, in the performance of a lifetime, plays George Walker Bush as about as well-intentioned as a five-year-old. Yet you still blame them for what happens when they’re around loaded guns. We see him first when he’s in his Freshman class at Yale (which, oddly enough, was the same class that contained Oliver Stone). All he wants to do is watch baseball and drink. He gets up to all sorts of crap, much to the consternation of his father, George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell) and mother Barbara (Ellen Burstyn).

These flashbacks to his more formative years are intercut with the buildup to Iraq, with his cronies like Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), Rice (Thandie Newton), George “Slam Dunk” Tenet (Bruce McGill), Karl “Turd Blossom” Rove (Toby Jones) and Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) nodding yes to almost his every whim. The only even semi-voice of doubt is General Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), and history, if not the film, will tell us that he was the first to resign in the ensuing shitstorm.

W. sets up Bush as a man who felt he was never good enough in the eyes of his father, in spite of the fact that he pulled strings for him time and time again and went to bat for him in front of the press. His one overriding fear is that he will taint the Bush name. He tries so very hard to live up to his family’s expectations. Both he and his brother Jeb run for Governor (in Texas and Florida respectively) in the same year, but Poppy Bush wants Jeb to have his go first. Needless to say, Dubya doesn’t take this well.

Yes, this falls in the realm of Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser editorializing, but it is not all that big a stretch to believe. One of Bush’s public rationales for going to war was “This is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

The film does have a couple of problems. The abridged history sometimes plays less like drama and more like Cliff’s Noting, particularly in a scene where Powell expresses his doubts and Cheney admits there’s no exit strategy for a potential occupation. I doubt all that happened in the span of five minutes. Plus, it is never made clear what Laura Bush (Elizabeth Banks) really sees in Dubya. Of course, it may be all for the best. Laura Bush is the only person involved in the current administration I wouldn’t shoo away from my door with a broom. If I found out the answer to that question, I may lose some respect for her. But as it stands, Stone did a much more thorough job with Pat Nixon in NIXON, leading to Joan Allen’s best performance to date.

On the personal nitpickery tip, there are some things the film left out that I, for one, wanted to see. I wanted to see the full slideshow of Press Secretaries the White House had. Here we just get Rob Corddry as Ari Fleischer. The Bush White House seems to go through Press Secretaries like Spinal Tap goes through drummers. Plus, Plamegate and the pardoning of Scooter Libby? That couldn’t have hurt.

Brolin is the MVP on the acting tip, inhabiting the role with a particular vigor and a charisma. Of the rest, high marks go to Wright as Powell, whose impression might not be the best but achieves a quiet, exasperated dignity. Also there’s plenty to be said about Cromwell as Bush The Elder, who is less adherent towards the Dana Carvey verbal ticks and plays more like our collective memory of the Reagan Vice-President. But for sheer accuracy? Oh, HANDS-THE-FUCK-DOWN, that goes to Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. Her appearance and demeanor were so dead-on that I visibly recoiled in my seat.

I think it is abundantly obvious at this point that this review is tainted by my own personal politics and I make absolutely no apologies for that fact. I’m sure that if you are a Bush Supporter (of which I imagine there are five still left), you might want to check and see if the National Review has a film critic. And hey, thanks for reading so far.

The Bush that is portrayed in W. is not a bad man. That’s cool, because I never really thought he was. A misguided putz, maybe, but not someone evil that we have to defeat. He’s scared. He’s concerned. He is a True Believer, both in God and what he is doing. One of the more haunting parts of the film is when he’s visiting wounded soldiers in the hospital, and he’s talking to, and comforting them. He is sad, but his eyes are clear. When his head hits the pillow every night, he is convinced that what he is doing is for the good of the nation.

Which is why, when I hear talk of impeachment and criminal action from left-wing bloggers (and some of my fellow film critics), I get apprehensive, and now I have a better grasp as to why. W. helped me understand that there will come a time, and it will come sooner, rather than later, that George Walker Bush will come to terms with the grim reality that he is the one who led to the greatest loss of life in wartime since Vietnam (which, if your memory serves you, was what his Poppy was so hellbent on avoiding the first time we went to Iraq). He will realize that he fucked it for everyone. And it will weigh on him heavily, and for the rest of his life.

That’s worse than impeachment, don’t you think?