It’s so good to see my hero director Oliver Stone doing what he does best: cage-rattlers. In this one, Josh Brolin gives a spooky, accurate and Oscar-worthy portrayal of our 43rd President of the United States. The “how could this man become our President?” story opens in W’s Yale days, 1966, when he drank, partied, and ended up in jail. George Bush Sr. (James Cromwell) tells “Junior” that “I’m bailing you out for the last time.” Unfortunately his father continues to bail him out – mainly out of life in general – as he floats through various jobs (always aided by a bottle of whiskey) in various locales that include rodeos, Wall Street and oil fields. The amusing part of the movie is Bush Senior’s constantly commenting, “What do you think you are? A Kennedy?” or “You disappoint me Junior, deeply disappoint me.” Well, George Sr. you aren’t the only one. W’s own mother, Barbara Bush (Ellen Burstyn), says “You’re loud and you have a short fuse” when referring to the idiotic idea that he could become the Governor of Texas. The three-ring-circus that eventually surrounds W includes amazing portrayals of Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright), Karl Rove (Toby Jones), Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) and Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush. The movie’s main focus is terrorism and W’s post-9/11 obsession with WMD’s (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq – except, as we now recognize, there weren’t any. Turns out the biggest weapon of mass destruction is George W. Bush himself. Oliver Stone is a man who knows how to weave a story with the right dose of romance, pain and energy, but unlike “Nixon” or “JFK,” this movie offers more fluff than controversy. Is it perhaps that the subject himself doesn’t quite measure up to what makes a good Oliver Stone movie? At first the movie is comical, and then, like George W. Bush’s long term in office, it becomes repetitive and tedious. Nevertheless THREE TIARAS
