"Who is in charge here?" yells Dubya to his senior staff. Months have passed in the Iraq war and no weapons of mass destruction have been found. "What I want to know is who here is in charge of finding those damn weapons?" pleads Dubya. Everyone looks around and starts blaming everyone else. That's when it struck me. What an ironic question for the leader of the free world to posit? The answer of course should be Dubya, but he isn't (even though he keeps on emphatically stating he is) and as this movie points out is that Dubya never was. He is a hollow man, headpiece filled with straw. Sort of like a post turtle. What's a post turtle? Well a post turtle is a turtle sitting on a post. You know it didn't get up there on it's own. It has no reason for being there. It doesn't know what to do while it's up there. And you just wonder what kind of idiot put it up there to begin with.
Oliver takes us through the story of Bush before he became President of the United States. You probably didn't know much of this. He was an alcoholic struggling under the shadow of his father. He got legacied into Yale and Harvard business school. He went through several jobs, doing poorly in all of them. He knocked up a girl and was once sent to prison. His early story basically consists of his father getting him out of mess after mess. Never does Dubya appear grateful for his many second chances. He is a spoiled rich kid with an air of arrogance and extreme resentment toward others for his own limitations.
But because of his lineage he is swept up by the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney who see an opportunity to exchange their ideology for the face time and charisma of a Bush. The exchanges in this movie probe to the real depths of why Bush does what he does. He gets lectured, informed, and at times even told what to say and how to act by Rove and Cheney. He may do exactly as they ask, but he still takes credit for all the decisions he makes to do exactly what they say. What an incredible delusion.
There is an especially telling scene at a press conference (This actually happened apparently) where Bush is asked what mistakes he's made and what he has learned from them. He's completely speechless and he should be. How can you learn from mistakes when your Daddy has been solving them for you all your life? How can you take responsibility when nothing you have done was your idea in the first place? If God called you to be president, how could you possibly do a bad job?
Oliver Stone's portrayal of Bush is truly a sympathetic one. He brings us through the story with sincerity and respect toward the subject matter. (If the story of Bush is a bit of a tragedy and the man comes off as not too great that's because he wasn't. The last eight years can attest to that.) Unfortunately this story may be a little too sympathetic, at least for an Oliver Stone film. As a tremendous Oliver Stone fan I expect a little something more from his movies. I expect him to blow the top off his films, to see something truly passionate and stimulating in a degree completely lacking in lesser films. I'd hate to be one of those critics to demand that a director make films like he made them twenty years ago, but that is what I come to expect from him. Oliver Stone has changed. One noticeable area is the energy level of this film. This is most apparent in the soundtrack. When a director decides to play a dainty version of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" as the backdrop to thee 'Shock and Awe' bombing of Baghdad you know he's lost his hardcore edge. When he transitions his scenes with a slow fade to black and a slow fade to a different scene he has deliberately slowed the movie down. When Oliver Stone made earlier biopics he entered scenes into those movies that didn't take place in real life but helped the viewer understand the emotions behind the story. (A great example is the wheelchair fight in 'Born on the 4th of July.' I know that didn't happen, but it is the best part of the movie.) Here he seems to have bowed down to the fact that he was making a very controversial film. I was taken aback by the risks he didn't take than by the ones he did. I have never seen an Oliver Stone film till now that felt like the director got cold feet. He refrains from any direct political stance, any hard line point, or any pointed judgment. The tone was muted. It was a bit disappointing. I truly believe that George W. Bush deserved a movie by Oliver Stone. Now I would say he deserves a movie by Oliver Stone twenty years ago.
The acting is superb although the script refrains from giving anyone a truly stand out performance. James Cromwell is great as the elder Bush. Toby Jones is a very good Karl Rove. Richard Dreyfuss plays a fine Dick Cheney. Josh Brolin does a very good job as President Bush. I liked him more as Bush than I liked Will Ferrel, Frank Caliendo, or Bush as Bush. The one weird performance was Thandie Newton playing Condoleeza Rice. Now I've never really heard her speak, but Thandie, in this movie, portrays her as a yes-man brown nose stuck with down syndrome. It's particularly weird. This movie, I'd say, is harder on Rice than anybody else. Colin Powell comes off looking like a genius by the way. He was the only person in the room who knew what he was talking about when it came to Iraq. Odd it is that he would be the first one fired.
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