Review: W. (2008) ** 1/2
Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Banks in W.
Somehow, Oliver Stone’s W. manages to live up to my best hopes and fall victim to my worst fears all at once. When Stone first announced he was planning a film about our sitting president, his intentions for it were unclear. Being too late for effective satire yet too early for accurate history, what would be the point? The idea sounded like an easy attention grab for a once well-regarded filmmaker who had recently fallen on fallow times. However, as clips of the film started turning up on TV and the Internet, Josh Brolin’s uncanny embodiment of George W. Bush made W. feel like it might be something worth seeing.
The good news is that Brolin really is terrific and so are some of the rest of the cast. The bad news is that the movie never justifies its existence, being instead content to examine the man central to some of the critical turning points in the recent history of the United States only to come away with the shallowest of notions that daddy issues were to blame for it all.
Beginning with a 2002 cabinet meeting where the Bush team comes up with the term “axis of evil” for the infamous State of the Union address justifying the pending war in Iraq, W. quickly introduces us to Brolin as Bush, Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney, Scott Glenn as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Jeffrey Wright as Secretary of State Colin Powell, Toby Jones as Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Thandie Newton as then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. In di rigueur biography fashion, the film then flashes back to Bush’s college days and traces his life as he transforms himself from an affable but aimless drunk to a born again Christian and ultimately the President of the United States of America.
As Bush goes from zero to hero and back to zero again, Stone hits all of the biographical touchstones while filling in the cracks with pure conjecture, both historical and psychological. He doesn’t make any outrageous claims, but in typical Stone fashion, the line between fact and fiction isn’t always clear.
As advertised, Josh Brolin is great as Bush. He takes the president’s ample physical tics and mannerisms, dials them back a notch and fills them out with a little psychological depth. His performance feels like a character rather than simply a caricature and he rises above the screenplay that tries awkwardly to shoehorn every comical Bush verbal misstep into the dialogue. Some of the best scenes have Brolin simply interacting with wife Laura, Cheney or Rove.
As Laura, Elizabeth Banks somehow manages to make another boring ‘devoted wife’ character kind of charming and interesting — more so in fact than the impression we’ve been given of the real Mrs. Bush. The other performances meanwhile range from James Cromwell’s effective but rather generic take on Bush Sr. (out of context you’d never know it was the former President) to Toby Jones’ more detailed Karl Rove (it’s good but doesn’t quite capture Rove’s essential weasel quality) to Thandie Newton’s cartoon misfire as Condoleezza Rice. In trying to embody the laughably uptight National Security Advisor, Newton instead seems to have channeled Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator Ernestine. The results aren’t pretty, but luckily Newton isn’t given much screen time.
Mainly because of Brolin, W. manages to entertain sporadically, but Stone and his co-screenwriter Stanley G. Weiser have failed utterly to enlighten. The film feels haphazardly thrown together from the stunt idea of making a film about Bush while the man was still in office. Combining bits of recorded history with generous dollops of unprovable pop psychobabble, W. lurches through its 2-hour plus running time without ever drawing to a satisfactory conclusion.
Stone’s restraint in dealing with his subject is as surprising as it is admirable, but he leaves you wondering what the point of the whole exercise was in the first place. One suspects that Stone wasn’t sure, but hoped that it would all come together during the rushed filming. It never did.
W. is not a bad film, but one that never takes adequate advantage of its loaded subject matter. It’s worth seeing for Brolin, but as a biography it would’ve felt at home on television.
W. USA 2008. Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by Oliver Stone and Stanley G. Weiser. Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael. Edited by Julie Monroe. Music score composed by Paul Cantelon. Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Thandie Newton, Richard Dreyfuss, Jeffrey Wright, Scott Glenn, Ioan Gruffudd, Toby Jones, Dennis Boutsikaris, Stacy Keach and Bruce McGill. 2 hours 9 minutes. MPAA Rated PG-13 for language including sexual references, some alcohol abuse, smoking and brief disturbing war images. 2.5 stars (out of 5)
Filed under: Reviews
Tags: Bruce McGill, Dennis Boutsikaris, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, Ioan Gruffudd, James Cromwell, Jeffrey Wright, Josh Brolin, Julie Monroe, Oliver Stone, Paul Cantelon, Phedon Papamichael, Richard Dreyfuss, Scott Glenn, Stacy Keach, Stanley G. Weiser, Thandie Newton, Toby Jones, W.
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We’re generally agreed on what the movie’s flaws are, but I think they’re more severe, perhaps due to having a bit more sympathy for Bush himself…
But we can all agree on one thing: the controversy was oh so anti-climactic. Oh well…
Another fine review Craig. I like how you’ve underscored the central question posed by Stone’s approach to this biography - what was the purpose?
I have not seen this and am quite satisfied to wait for it to crop up on cable while I’m folding laundry sometime. That was my take before I read your review, and even more so afterwards. I like Brolin a lot, but not enough to shell out money for two tickets to spend time with that character.
It sounds like my fears about the script were confirmed. I was especially bothered by the facile way it–as you mentioned–tried to work all the trademarked-Bush verbal misfires, pretzel-chokings, etc. into the narrative. Not organic at all.
I pretty much agree with all your points, Craig. W. felt woefully uncertain of how to dissect Bush or his history and so rather than find a compelling through-line, it simply meanders around the subject. At times its satirical, at other times reverential. I never got a clear sense of what Stone’s take on his subject was or what the point of the movie was. Brolin’s performance saves the film from ending up being completely perfunctory, but it’s not enough to make this worth the effort.
Stone repeatedly brings up certain interesting elements of Bush’s contradictory life story, only to drop them and shift tone over and over again. It would have been interesting to contrast Bush’s early defeat to a Texas Democrat with his low ball, dirty tricks political strategy employed against Anne Richards and John McCain, but we don’t get that. It would have been interesting to see the near Machiavellian relationships that have commandeered much of Bush’s political career, from Karl Rove to Dick Cheney, but Stone only touches on these briefly and then pulls away, implying that Bush was always really in charge. It would have been interesting to simply understand the relationship between Bush and his wife, who has metamorphosed from a left wing liberal into the patron of all things family values, but Stone once again touches on it and pulls away.
The movie has a lot of potential options to pursue, but as another reviewer said, it’s nothing more than the rough draft of a film.
And I’m really disappointed to see that Stone never really tries to address the jackass mushmouth of a politician we’ve been subjected to for 8 years with the real man that he is. That dichotomy has to be worth at least 30 minutes of narrative alone, as the Bush that leads and the Bush that fails are two interesting sides of a coin we’ve all become painfully familiar with.
I liked the movie a lot more than you did, but I agree about Newton’s performance as Rice…that’s where the movie most veered into SNL parody territory.
My favorite performance of the bunch was Cromwell’s. It’s true that you wouldn’t know who it was outside of the film, but I felt like it had the most emotional depth of any of them.
My biggest problem was the timing…and as a result the film has no ending. I think Stone would have benefited from waiting.
let the supposed oscar bait film keep getting bad/medicore reviws and throw away box office.
thank god or whomever.
and when they fall/maybe something i like will raise. although i doubt that…
I’m not too far off from you Craig, perhaps I liked it a bit less. But I concur with your estimation that the entire affair is purposeless. I am as liberal as the next guy, in fact I am all the way over to the left, and I am a fervant Democrat and Obama supporter. However, that is not going to have me issuing undeserved praise for a film that is disjointed, all over the map and devoid of any central focus apart from making Bush look like a jerk. (which is something we don’t need Stone to tell us.)
I wholeheartedly agree with you on Brolin’s performance, and I was reasonably entertained by all the “stupid” humor, which had us laughing “at” rather than “with” so to speak.
This is one of Stone’s most poorly made films, from both an artsitic standpoint and from one of dubious biographical data.
Yet another very good review here at LIC.
As more of a Bush supporter, were you surprised at how evenhanded the film was, Danny?
Matthew, Cromwell was definitely good, he just didn’t aim for impersonation too much. Nothing wrong with that.
I like how you bring up the meandering quality Joel. I tried to say that in the review, but you stated it more explicitly. The film really didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. Going in I thought that maybe it was that VIEWERS couldn’t reconcile what THEY wanted it to be wiht what it was, but I no longer think that’s the case.
JB, if you were a bigger Brolin fan, I’d recommend you see it anyway, but under the circumstances your instinct is correct. There are plenty of other good movies to see in theaters and on hte horizon.
Are you looking forward to anything coming up at all Glimmer?
It sounds like we’re on the same page Sam, but we differ by degree.
lol@ “In trying to embody the laughably uptight National Security Advisor, Newton instead seems to have channeled Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator Ernestine.”
Love your last paragraph, Joel.
There’s a Bush movie to made about the banality of evil,
but Stone is no Lang,
and W is no M
I have more to say after the Xanax takes the edge off.
The movie has a lot of problems, not the least of which was the “empire” scene with Cheney practically twirling his mustache while planning the domination of the world. Come on, I’ll be the first to nominate the guy for Best Supervillain of the 21 Century but does anyone really believe anything that theatrical ever occurred? It not only patronizes the audience but it simplifies a complicated situation to such kindergarten levels that it undermines anything Stone has to say about Bush’s war.
For every great moment in the movie, and there were a few, he completely undercuts all his credibility with dribble like that.
I’d agree generally about all the actors. Cromwell did a good job but avoided an impression, instead simply playing the character. Same with Scott Glenn, and I appreciated it in both cases. Newton was in a different movie, but I didn’t expect much from her to begin with.
When it comes down to the core components of the W., I don’t think I disagree with a word Craig wrote.
For a while now, I feared that this would be milquetoast and lukewarm, and that rather than representing a return to form for Oliver Stone, it would merely continue the downward, desultory trend of his more recent movies. That was the case.
Josh Brolin is excellent, though, so there is that. He portrays Bush as what he seems to be, a frat brat who never grew up; he just became driven and ambitious.
However, the daddy issues, however legitimate or not, are pummelled into the ground by Stone.
And I personally have a problem with placing quotes such as the infamous “Fool me once” bit into a different context, time and place than the instance we know occurred. (This is especially troublesome, as the film itself lacks context, and that is its great Achilles’ heel–though that is being exceedingly charitable about it, since the film is hardly in Achilles’ class.)
Thandie Newton was embarrassing. Scott Glenn was good. James Cromwell stood out because he was so unrecognizable as Bush, Sr. compared to the rest of the cast, but he gave a solid performance. Jeffrey Wright failed to register as Powell, but just maybe that was the point of the character, considering the impact Stone evidently wished to have on the verisimilitude of his film. Richard Dreyfuss took what many would consider the most villainous role and largely underplayed it. The “empire” scene worked for me because studying Cheney, I have no doubt he speaks in such a way. He is truly an imperialist, and his own Office of Special Plans, a veritable headquarters of neocon button men, testifies to his voracious foreign policy agenda.
Again, however, as Craig says, it’s Brolin who comes out of W. smelling like a rose.
My main problem with the “empire” scene was that I don’t believe Cheney would so foolishly lay all his cards on the table in plain view of his main adversaries in the White House, Powell and Rice. And I don’t think he would have spelled out those desires so plainly to Bush either. I do honestly believe that it’s a far more complex situation than Stone portrays, that all of them truly thought they were protecting the country, and that most of them believed that bringing democracy to the Middle East would sow the seeds of change.
However, I also believe Cheney had a specific agenda going into his role as VP and that he, his staff, the President, and a number of other key individuals knew full-well that they breaking a number of laws and undermining the constitution in their fervor to protect American interests here and abroad. This doesn’t condone or negate what they did or how they did it, but it’s more complicated than simply “wanting their oil” as Stone portrays. Missing that undermines any realistic or critical evaluation of Bush or his administration.
A fair review, Craig, and in line with the critical consensus. I guess I was just impressed with the actor’s imitating abilities and didn’t end up thinking about the realistic motives of the actual characters, as in that empire scene. Those were such well-worn cliches, but I still found myself just watching the actors acting.
I actually think Jones played Rove fairly here, which I guess means that I’m saying Rove is only a weasel in the public arena. Seen here, around his friends, I imagine he actually is a bit more of a softie.
Apparently I’m the only person who thought Thandie Newtown did well here. True, she was trying as hard she could to be Rice (moving into the caricature role more than the character role, as you rightly differentiate), but after the first few laughable scenes I actually bought the character, at least as much as anyone else on screen.
I agree with Alexander that neither Cromwell or Wright fit in that sense.
Did anyone else think the circular bank of lights above the table during the ‘empire’ scene was a tiny little wink to Ken Adams’ production design for hte War Room in Dr. Strangelove?
I have to say I toyed with giving hte movie I higher rating. It was entertaining at times, I can’t deny it. To a point it irritated me on princple. Occasionally entertaining isn’t enough with a topic like this.
And yeah, the out of contex verbal gaffs were probably the most outwardly irritating part of the film. They always got a chuckle out of the audience, but they bugged me.
I think you’re right about Rove, Daniel. In this case I think I find the man so loathesome I would’ve enjoyed more of a caricature.
Karl Rove is Peter Pettigrew. Unless Stone shows him morphing into a greasy little rodent, where’s the catharsis, where’s the justice?
I agree with you, Daniel, that Rove and some of these other characters aren’t likely as loathsome in reality as they are in front of the TV camera, wonking on and on about this or that. I just felt the relationship itself is far more interesting than Stone chose to portray it.
I didn’t mind the verbal gaffs out of context, as little of the movie was about recreating known historical moments to begin with. I got the quick impression that Stone wanted to capture the man, not stage every speech and CNN moment we’ve come to know, but he didn’t want to put words in Bush’s mouth or make him appear to be more eloquent in private than he is at the podium. In that respect, I didn’t have any problem at all with it. The “fool me once, fool me twice” scene was priceless in that respect.
Good points, Joel. The Rove relationship could be considered another missed opportunity. I think I mentioned here or in my review that there’s enough meat to make a movie out of any of these people, let alone just Bush. Not that I really want to sit down and watch a Rove biopic, but if it was well done or if it was an evenhanded documentary, it could fascinating.
Was the “fool me” scene during lunch at the end? I liked that scene a lot, and I loved when Bush made that “other world” comment about Rumsfeld.
I believe so Daniel. That scene was very interesting and I imagine, pretty accurate (although I didn’t buy the Cheney comment about Rummy immediately following that…Rummy was Cheney’s right hand man). The scene where they’re fighting over who is actually looking for WMDs in Iraq seemed bizarre to me, as I’m sure there was an all-out effort to find WMD’s in Iraq as soon as the ground invasion ended. As I recall, the Army had an entire special task force designed specifically for that purpose on the job for months.
Anyway, I’d love to see a good doc on Rove or Cheney. PBS’ Frontline has done some decent reporting on Cheney, but Rove remains something of an enigma.
Riffing off what Daniel said about the side characters…Bush being president…TWICE…says more about US than it says about Bush. The characters surrounding him are far more interesting. Hell, a whole movie about the fight between Powell and Rumsfeld would be interesting.
Give it some time Craig. I’m sure “liberal” Hollywood will go after the topic at some point because there’s got to be some great drama there. Might take a while though…look how long it was before Nixon got his proper due.
Speaking of PBS, joel, if anyone is hankering for a Bush story with real depth, check out the Frontline program, The Jesus Factor
I haven’t seen W. and don’t intend to, but maybe you guys can tell me if Stone ever questions Bush’s “born again” transformation or just takes W’s word for it. Frontline blows open the faith-based Bush. The Jesus Factor proposes that when he got down on his knees with evangelicals he was motivated by his need to huddle with a gullible constituency. He was looking to hitch a ride to higher office on a right-wing and a prayer. Bush was primarily interested in saving his political career, not his soul.
If Stone fails to debunk the “born again” bullshit, then he’s propagating the ugliest Bush Myth of all. A movie about hijacking Christianity to be used as an advertising ploy for war profiteers is a story worth telling. Portraying Bush 41 as Jim Backus and Bush 43 as James Dean is repulsive to me.
Nope, Stone takes the transformation at face value.
Ryan, I haven’t seen W. yet, but (a) the ‘Backus/Dean’, Oedipal, ‘protagonist tries to live up to his father’ drama is pretty much the A #1 Oliver Stone trademark throughout his career, even surpassing his political themes.
Also, the best way to attract a group of followers re: evangelicals, is to literally decide you are one of them. I don’t consider Bush to be a person of strong morals or deeply held beliefs, but I believe that in his mind, he believes he is, and you can’t really argue with that.
The one thing about Bush that Stone never calls into question or ridicules is Bush’s religious beliefs. Other people might read it differently but that’s how I saw it.
I’ve personally known quite a few evangelicals who consider themselves fully born again and I was once a member of that faith. I can tell you from a broad range of experience that the difference between what you might consider “Christian” behavior and the reality of it are two different things entirely the vast majority of the time. I don’t want to open a theological discussion here, but the reason most Christians will quickly forgive and forget the most egregious behavior from their elected proxies is that the essential quality that makes a Christian a Christian is the belief in becoming a better or moral person, not necessarily the success of having accomplished it. It’s this trait that makes Christianity such a popular fit for politics: all the benefits, almost no drawbacks.
I think Bush believes he is a born again Christian, doing God’s will. I think Cheney, Rove, and the GOP power brokers chose to exploit that for their own gain and Bush (and by extension, folks like Sarah Palin) go along with it for their own gain. Whether its right or wrong is a debate we’ll continue having, but don’t expect Christians to get too worked up about it.
Sort of combining what Jeff and Joel just said, beyond Jesus’ own daddy issues, I don’t think Stone had much interest in W.’s religious transformation, real or otherwise.