W.: Ein missverstandenes Leben

W. Was released in the wrong time. Probably 10 years too soon. If you stumble upon this film now, you will be entertained. Because this story and this character are just absurd. Politics aside, Brolin does a good job portraying W.

I suggest watching VICE first and then back to back this one and you will appreciate it more.

7,1/10.

Two of my least favorite people in one project! A president with a blunt intellect, but a remarkable ability to project a simple story. And a filmmaker with the same qualities. Each would be relatively harmless as clerks who amuse at lunch breaks, but these are men whose inadequacies break worlds.

It is no wonder that this portrays Bush respectfully. No wonder that it is all about intent: the man is a good, honest, unselfish man whose only weakness was a vision of an unrealistic utopia and the accident of being surrounded by fools and devils. I believe that all of Stone's projects are autobiographical and he impresses on them his own story. Its Woody Allen, except instead of placing himself in the cosmic forces of personal relationships and self, he wanders among what he sees is a cosmos of global conspiracy. That he is able to make a living in Hollywood is, I think, because our notions of noir are close enough to this so that he (and Spike Lee) can bloviate and make a living.

As time goes on, he worries more and more about himself, so he makes his heroes basically good men, lost.

But this time history bucks him. The culpability of this man cannot be explained away by blaming Rove and Cheney. His qualms about torture are known to not have happened. We know that he pushed for policies that will be evaluated in time as war crimes. Now, he may have done that with noble intent, but more ruthless and scheming than this golden Rube we see here.

This is a disaster for history. Because so few Americans read books, instead getting their history from films and blogmobs.

The cinematic values of Stone's prior work are not even visible. The energy of "Platoon," the craft of "JFK" are gone. We have normal TeeVee movie framing here.

I think we should vote Stone out.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

If you are looking for a probing analysis of the eight years of G. W. Bush's presidency, you would be better off reading the books that have already appeared by Woodward and others. At times, this biopic can't rise above sitcom level: the college hazing that is just dumb, not revelatory of Bush's character; the bickering that goes on around the table as Cheney takes on Powell; Rice and her sycophantic behavior around the President (she can't believe he is so uninformed, yet he is her mealticket). It sounds like an episode of Friends, yet you would have to call it Enemies.

Some commenters have taken Thandie Newton to task for her satirical portrait of Rice, but this is the tradition with Oliver Stone: somebody has to be the comedic relief. It was Joe Pesci and Tommy Lee Jones in JFK, James Woods in Nixon, and here we get Scott Glenn being wacky, Bruce McGill being oily and self-serving, Toby Jones being... what, exactly? I couldn't grasp what his take on Karl Rove was all about. Newton's burlesque is just part of the wallpaper in this film.

Me and my girlfriend are both staunch democrats and we both thoroughly enjoyed. Love or hate him, the guys lived an interesting life. You see a transformation from a spoiled frat boy begging his dad to buy him a baseball team to a competent public servant who genuinely wants to do right by his country. Definitely watch.

With his "in the moment" biopic "W." the normally volatile Oliver Stone wisely saves his judgments for history when hindsight will be 20/20. Achingly subdued and slightly satirical, Stone plays it straight and to the bone. Here he presents us with the early years of our current lame duck president, showing Dubya rushing a frat-house at Yale, meeting Laura at a barbecue, living in the shadow of his father and brother, his troubles holding down a job, his failed bid to become baseball commissioner, and his defining moment when he gives up drinking and becomes born-again. All of which leads us to his first term and the Iraq War quagmire, where Dubya honest-to-goodness truly believes "God" wanted him to become president and that Iraq did have those rascally WMD.

In the lead role, Josh Brolin is an endearingly bumble-headed Dubya, and Stone presents him as a simple-minded man with good intentions who has been crippled by his "daddy issues" and has surrounded himself with the most cynical, self-serving, and corrupt administration in modern American history. The supporting cast is a hoot, with highlights including Thandie Newton eliciting big laughs just with her facial expressions as a wicked and moronically faithful Condi Rice, Elizabeth Banks giving a winning portrayal of Laura Bush, and Richard Dreyfuss playing Cheney as the most insipid megalomaniac American politics has ever seen.

Stone accomplishes three major coups here that should surprise those who expected a one-sided liberal smear job. First, he humanizes George W. Bush. The director does this with savvy editing showing the back-story of why Dubya does the things he does (i.e. why he uses nicknames for everyone or why running three miles every day is so important to him), and then juxtaposing that with the inane decisions he has made as president. By utilizing actual transcripts from press conferences, news coverage, and meetings, Stone and scribe Stanley Weiser allow Bush and his administration to speak for themselves, and it's both comically cathartic and occasionally frightening to see it dramatized so well. Second, he redeems the presidency of George "Poppy" Bush (a somewhat miscast but still effective James Cromwell) by showing what a restrained and thoughtful Commander in Chief he was compared to his naive and too-eager-to-please son. Thirdly, he redeems the legacy of Colin Powell (a surprisingly good Jeffrey Wright), who is shown here as the only person in the administration with any hindsight or foresight, and the only sane voice who questioned the motives for entering Iraq, though he eventually caved in and played along. His "f-you" to Cheney towards the film's final act is priceless.

As the actual presidency still has a few months to go at the time of the film's release, Stone's biopic was never written a true ending, leaving us with a symbolic image of Dubya looking up to the sky in center field waiting to catch a ball that will never drop. It may be another twenty years before we can pass any accurate judgment on Dubya's legacy, and likewise, Stone's film will have to wait. It's going to be a long time before anyone catches all those balls George W. Bush's administration threw up in the air.