Paramount Pictures

Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr.

Editor’s Note: Due to our growing concern that movies and blogs are two of the few places left in American culture where the truth can be told, we are going to be watching and reviewing more movies in the months ahead. Our reviewer is former newspaper man and expert movie buff Henry Rosenbush of Tuscaloosa, who blogs himself on one of our sister Websites, RosenbushCafe.com. Below is his first draft review written on the day the movie opened, today.

We saw the movie Thursday night in the local debut, however, and my impression is this: What I liked about Iron Man is that it was not just some jingoistic all American superhero special effects orgy.

The billionaire arms dealer anti-hero who you meet in an American humvee in Afghanistan in the opening scene is transformed into someone who wants to do good in the world, after his capture and escape, when he sees his company’s weapons in the hands of evil men. So he not only kills a few Middle Eastern extremists. He saves a few Afghan families too.

Review by Henry B. Rosenbush

Finally, Hollywood delivers a superhero who is middle-aged, rather than a nerdy kid, not from another planet, and devoid of superpowers without external reinforcement.

The Marvel Comics hero, creation of Stan Lee, provides exactly what is usually missing in the comic-to-movie-transliteration; witty, funny, profound and grounded in the reality of today’s turbulent Middle East. The bar was set Thursday, as Paramount Picture’s Iron Man opened in 4,105 theaters; it warrants the advanced hype as the summer blockbuster to overcome.

Downy is a perfect choice as the human champion turned metal man and in a delightfully wicked turn, Jeff Bridges, is top-notch as Obadiah Stane, surrogate father turned ruthless enemy.

Gwyneth Paltrow imbues secretary-cum-girl-of-all-trades Pepper Potts with surprising nuance and is pulchritudinous while the most profoundly affecting perf is delivered by Shaun Toub, as fellow prisoner, Yinsen. While other acting is essentially one-dimensional, including Rhodey (Terrance Howard), the major focus is on how one man transforms from callous arms supplier to defender of the oppressed and in that respect Downey provides plenty of shadings and subtext to his conflicted superman.

Aside from a climax that too closely resembles last summer’s Transformers, it nonetheless delivers the goods in every department from the dozens of special effects companies, production designer J. Michael Riva, cinematographer Matthew Libatique and especially Jon Favreau’s nifty direction that judiciously does not rush the story towards its climatic battle between Iron Men Stark and Stane.

Getting a leap on Warner Brothers’ Speed Racer next weekend, followed by Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Par’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man provides entertainment on several levels usually devoid in summer action films.

Tony Stark, disarmingly portrayed by Downy, is a supercilious skirt chaser, but brilliant scientist, as well as, supplier of advanced weaponry to the world.

The film wastes no time beginning with an assault on Stark’s military envoy in Afghanistan where everyone is killed. Before settling in on Stark’s transformation in a cave prison, the film jumps back 36 hours to show us the lifestyle of the ubiquitous and fantastically wealthy playboy. Stark has similarities to Bruce Wayne; ultra-rich, parentless and haunted by demons that will shape his character’s conversion. Both characters are not Superman; they are earth-bound and require technology and body armor to succeed as superheroes.

Marvel Comics purist may quibble with minor changes. Updated from the 1963 original, Jarvis is no longer Stark’s butler, having been upgraded to a computer that offers plenty of advice that is resoundingly ignored. The original enemies were Viet Cong, but the screenwriters have wisely changed them to a disparate group of terrorists under the leadership of bald-headed Raza (Faran Tahir), who professes to be a modern incarnation of Genghis Kahn.

After bedding a comely reporter, Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb), Starks heads to Afghanistan for a successful demonstration of the Jericho rocket to the military and the assault on the convoy and Stark’s capture.

In a scene that echoes the recent realization that General Electric is helping Iran with technologies that are being directly used against our soldiers in Iraq, Stark sees numerous weapons emblazoned with the Stark logo that Raza is using to wreck havoc in the region with his group of grungy and dangerous terrorist minions. The dual screenwriting team of Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum and Matt Holloway cleverly eliminate any indication of Islamic fundamentalist ideologies and instead focuses on how weapons are sold clandestinely to fanatics and the expected carnage that ensues.

Stark finds himself a prisoner of Raza, who wants his own Jericho missile. With shrapnel embedded in his heart, Stark later surreptitiously removes the power source from one of his weapons and like a nuclear pacemaker discovers what will later power his Iron Man suit. Forced to build the weapon, Stark and Yinsen ingeniously design the prototype suit even while the terrorist watch them on closed circuit screens. After Yinsen sacrifices himself to give Stark time to complete a download to the metal outfit, the film’s first glimpse of its application in battle is seen as the terrorist’s camp is decimated.

After crashing in the desert, Stark is rescued by the American military, but naturally leaves the crashed suit that will be later reassembled by Raza behind.

Stark’s return is met with skepticism as he announces, at a press conference, much to the dismay of Stane and stockholders, that he is discontinuing constructing weapons. With stocks plummeting Stane secretly begins making his move against his partner and later aligns himself with Raza, but not before Stark returns to Afghanistan as a new and improved red Iron Man to finish off many of the terrorists he left behind. After finding the remnants of the original suit in Afghanistan, Stane’s bodyguards execute all the terrorists, although Raza is seen being paralyzed and not killed on screen.

As expected, the special effects are amazing, from a wonderfully rendered first time night flight over Malibu, California to Stan Winston’s superb Iron Man suit being constructed, similarly to the first Robocop, albeit, with a far more intricate assembly. Ramin Djawadi’s score is a plus with an excerpt of the title track, Black Sabbath’s Iron Man, as the credit scrawl begins and remain through the end credits for a hip teaser featuring an uncredited popular African-American thesp who articulates the anticipated sequel‘s possible storyline.

Stark’s sincere conversion is genuine in a humanistic manner which is unique for science fiction-based scenarios while the repartee with Potts and well-timed witticisms add to his charm. Credit Downey for earning audience sympathy as he brings altruism to a character that in lesser hands would have been contrived and incredulous.

Possibilities into romance between Stark and Potts are unrequited with a near kiss interrupted. Their chemistry, however, hints that in future installments a relationship may blossom.

The only challenge to the sequel is revealed with Stark’s final clever quip, which I will not disclose, but suffice to say this may be the first superhero movie ending that wears its literal dénouement proudly as if to wink at the enthusiastic audience.

Testing the improved suit: Paramount Pictures

The trailer…

Paramount’s Iron Man, the first and some critics say the best of the summer movies for 2008, opens in some local theaters tonight. The summer season officially begins Friday. Watch for the review here and over at RosenbushCafe.com.

by Henry B. Rosenbush and Glynn Wilson

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., Feb. 4 – Without the blues and the electric guitar and Fat Tuesday, there would be no Obama, affectionately referred to in these parts as GoBama.

I don’t know who independent filmmaker John Sayles is going to vote for today or where he plans to celebrate Mardi Gras Day.

Stephen Hundley of Birmingham debuts in Honeydripper

But it may not be coincidence that he released his engaging musical comedy drama Honeydripper on the eve of Fat Tuesday AND Super Tuesday, just as Barack Obama is surging in the polls as the first black man in American history who may have a real shot at ascending to the presidency.

The scene at the historic Bama Theater, the last local palatial Depression era movie palace along with The Alabama in Birmingham, was buzzing with a record diverse crowd of 900, coming as close to filling the 1300-seat room with excitement as anyone can remember.

Filmed on location in several Alabama towns, including Greenville and Midland subbing for the fictitious town of Harmony, the first inkling you get of the place comes when itinerant guitarist Sonny Blake (the superb Gary Clark Jr.) steps off the train and says it looks like a nice town to find a place to play his guitar and sing.

But a railway station porter hints that all may not be so harmonious in Harmony.

“I’ve only been arrested once,” he says. “And the town was called Liberty.”

The subtext of simmering corruption revealed, the story drifts lazily in inoffensive fashion to the more creative side and uplifting world of rhythm and blues, although the racial component is always there, just underneath the surface. It’s 1950 Alabama, after all, well before Selma.

But aside from white Sheriff Pugh (Stacy Keach), a single scene with Mary Steenburgen and a cameo by Sayles as a whiskey delivery man, the film is inhabited primarily by rich Southern African-American characters who laid the ground work in many ways for Obama.

The film is book ended with two young black boys pretending to be musicians on the porch of a Southern shutgun house, reminiscent of most every child’s dream of one day becoming good enough at something to break the fame barrier – even if you are poor and black in America.

The story introduces a secession of colorful characters starting with Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) who is about to lose his roadhouse lounge, the Honeydripper, over debt to the town’s big businessmen, black and white.

In fact, our first clue that all is not well financially is a thoroughly heartrending scene as house singer Bertha Mae (Dr. Mable John) performs to an empty house, while her consort Slick (Vondie Curtis Hall) urges her on anyway. She dies a few days later, however, symbolic of the passing of the old blues style that was drawing no audience after World War II to the new music with a more powerful sound you could dance to. The scene of her funeral down an Alabama dirt road brings back memories of another time before Interstate highways, Rock ‘n’ Roll and black men running for president.

On hand for much of the comic relief is Maceo (Charles S. Dutton) as Tyrone’s friend. We meet Tyrone’s wife Delilah (Lisa Gay Hamilton) in the midst of religious uncertainty, a black preacher and gospel choir beckoning the women especially away from the darkness of the bar. His stepdaughter, newcomer Yaya DaCosta as the lovely China Doll, falls for the tall and shiny Sonny right away – over eggs and bacon, biscuits and grits.

With an excellent score of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz – fused with the unexpected origins of Rock ‘n’ Roll – composer Mason Darling and music supervisor Tim Bernett compile an impressive soundtrack to fit the drama.

The audience was reverent and appreciative, and the racial polemic was not lost on the older patrons, present company included, who lived through the era depicted in Honeydripper in the South. It was the same racial polemic that would have prevented the very audience assembled from mixing in public in the age of acoustic blues in the backwoods – and “Colored Only” signs across the tracks in town.

Glynn Wilson

Producer Maggie Renzi and  writer/director John Sayles answer questions after the show

Much has changed for the better since 1950 on the southern bigotry front, and Sayles the writer keeps the insipidness of prejudice encapsulated in Sheriff Pugh. Keach salvages his character from the usual stereotypical caricature by making him a rotund yokel with a fried chicken sandwich obsession, specifically from the struggling club owner’s wife. But he’s not a man who doesn’t know when it’s time to exit the scene and let people be.

With a concocted idea to save Honeydripper by attracting the regional celebrity Guitar Sam to play a one night stand, Tyrone expects to raise his family out of economic despair. But when Sam fails to show up with his guitar on the Saturday train, hospitalized for a knife fight in Memphis, a young guitar player who ends up in town looking for a chance to play is rescued from the cotton fields by day and the Harmony jail at night – and gets his opportunity to stand in for Sam and show off his homemade electric guitar.

Sonny immediately runs afoul of Pugh and is put on a work detail picking cotton. There is some smoldering potential violence involving two secondary characters whose actions will resolve an awful secret haunting Tyrone from his days as an up-and-coming piano player and his own run in with the ego of man – and a knife.

The bucolic scenery photographed by cinematographer Dick Pope reveals the rural south in pastels and browns while the production designer Toby Corbett reveals a keen eye for the verisimilitude of the period. All tech credits are superb for this low budget film. Once again all good films begin with a compelling scenario and strong acting rather than mind-numbing shootouts and car chases.

The film takes some time to get going with the abundant cast on hand. But kudos to Keb’ Mo’ as blind sage guitarist Possum who is subtly revealed as perhaps an apparition only seen by Sonny and Tyrone, showing up with sage advice at all the right times, himself playing the second guitar ever made. The devil got the first.

The introduction of Sonny’s homemade electric guitar provides a wonderful coda that segues nicely with the young boys from the opening scene, who evolve in the end in portentous ways you will have to see to judge. Some critics say the buildup took too much of the 2 hours and 2 minutes. But when it comes, the power doesn’t go off and the crowd packs in and what a new day it is for Harmony – and the Honeydripper.

The most disappointing weakness, aside from the feeling that the story could have even been stronger with more money and time, was the cheap sound system in the theater. Someone needs to write them a grant and find them a sound engineer. It was all mid-range and no bass, making some of the dialogue a tad hard to follow.

Honeydripper opens locally and in select Southern theaters February 8. It’s not only worth seeing. It should be a must see in these times, just to see how far we’ve traveled to get where we are today.

Glynn Wilson

Stephen Hundley, 16, the nephew of jazz drummer Foxy Fatts of Birmingham, played the drummer Young Henry in John Sayles’ film Honeydripper set in 1950 Alabama. I caught up with him outside the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa, where the movie premiered Monday night. And there was Foxy, chewing on a toothpick as always, promoting his up-and-coming protégé.

In a celebration of Black History Month, the Bama Theatre in downtown Tuscaloosa will premiere John Sayles’s movie “Honeydripper” on Monday Feb. 4. The movie about the intersection of Civil Rights and Rhythm and Blues, which has been nominated for 2 NAACP Image Awards, will begin at 7:30 p.m.

“Blue Monday at the Bama” is sponsored by the Alabama Blues Project and the Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa, with support from the University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences.

There will be a reception with Hollywood producer John Sayles and director Maggie Renzi featuring live blues music featuring Henderson Huggins, Stephan Hundley, Willie King and Carroline Shines beginning at 6 p.m., and a question and answer session after the movie with Sayles and Renzi.

Tickets are $6 for students, $8 for Tuscaloosa Arts Council members and Friends of the Alabama Blues Project and $10 for general admission at the door.

For more information call the Alabama Blues Project at: 205-752-6263 or the Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa: 205-758-5195.

Danny Glover speaks about the importance of the movie Honeydripper in this YouTube video.

Noted movie critic Roger Ebert gave it 3 stars.

We do not cover a lot of celebrity, tabloid-style news on this Web Press, but it’s different if we know someone who pops up in the news, especially when that someone dies tragically and unexpectedly.

Brad Renfro, the young actor from Knoxville, Tennessee who broke into the movies from a DARE theater program for troubled kids in the 1990s with a major role in “The Client,” based on John Grisham’s novel, was found dead Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. He was 25.

The cause of death was not immediately determined, according to sources, but an autopsy was planned. Renfro had reportedly been partying with friends the night before, which is not surprising, since that’s how he spent a lot of his time based on my experience knowing him in Knoxville from 1996-2000.

He was a nice, soft spoken and even shy young man. As well as showing some talent as an actor, he was a decent guitar player who showed up for the Wednesday night weekly blues jam at Sassy Ann’s on a regular basis. I played the drums several times in the same ad hoc combination, and partied with him a number of times, but never really got close to him. He came from a relatively poor and troubled home and could be quite distant when asked questions about himself and his family.

I tried several times to do a formal interview with him but he always declined.

Renfro’s lawyer, Richard Kaplan, told the Associated Press he was on the road to recovery from addiction.

“He was working hard on his sobriety,” Kaplan said. “He was doing well. He was a nice person.”

Renfro recently completed a role in “The Informers,” a film adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel that stars Winona Ryder, Brandon Routh and Billy Bob Thornton, according to the AP.

“Brad was an exceptionally talented young actor and our time spent with him was thoroughly enjoyable,” Marco Weber, president of the film’s production house, Senator Entertainment, said in a statement.

Renfro had his share of run-ins with the law over the years. He served 10 days in jail in May 2006 after pleading no contest to driving while intoxicated and guilty to attempted possession of heroin after being arrested on Skid Row while attempting to buy heroin from an undercover agent in 2005. He was placed on probation in January 2001 and ordered to pay $4,000 for repairs to a 45-foot yacht he and a friend tried to steal in Florida in August 2000, the month I left Knoxville for New Orleans.

I was told a wave of crack addictions hit Knoxville about that time and destroyed the lives of a number of talented musicians from East Tennessee.

He was arrested again in May 2001 and charged with underage drinking, violating the terms of his probation, and was ordered into alcohol rehabilitation the following March.

In 1998, Renfro was charged with possession of cocaine and marijuana. He avoided jail time in that case due to a plea deal, aided in part by his sponsors in the DARE program and in Hollywood.

His other movie credits included “Sleepers” and “Deuces Wild,” as well as “Apt Pupil” and “The Jacket.”

AP: Troubled Actor Brad Renfro Dies at 25

Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson

Have you ever wondered why so many movies depicting the South also contain an underlying crazy theme?

I guess that’s what they think of us in New York and LA.

One of my favorites is Crazy in Alabama, featured on HBO recently. It’s a comedy-drama released in 1999 written by Mark Childress, based on his own 1993 novel of the same name. It stars Melanie Griffith as an abused wife who flees small town life in the South for California to become a movie star – with her dead husband Chester’s head in a hat box.

Meanwhile back in Alabama, her nephew, the story’s narrator, has to contend with a racially-motivated murder involving a corrupt sheriff during the Civil Rights Era.

It’s an interesting model for any would-be Southern writer thinking of trying to get New York editors interested in stories that will also play well on the big screen.

I’ve been mining the movie field of late thinking of stories to tell myself.

One of my favorite books written by a Southern author and then made into a movie is The Prince of Tides, based on a 1986 novel by Pat Conroy.

It tells the story of the narrator’s struggle to overcome the psychological damage inflicted by his dysfunctional childhood in South Carolina and stars Nick Nolte as a football coach and Barbra Streisand as a New York psychiatrist. While changes to the film upset some Conroy purists, it was a box office smash and put Streisand on the map as a director. It was also recently featured on HBO.

Conroy is probably the premier Southern author of the late 20th century whose work has been both financially successful and also acclaimed in literary circles, unlike John Grisham’s work, which is relegated to the legal thriller genre. In spite of the film’s flaws, The Prince of Tides does capture both the character of the South and New York in the introspective times of the 1980s, making it an irresistible tale that will last – like Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men.

But neither of those movies is what draws me to the keyboard tonight.

I doubt if it qualifies for the National Film Registry, but another innocent little tale caught my attention today. Sometimes when the cable offerings are weak, it’s worth stopping on the story of Doc Hollywood, or Dr. Ben Stone, played by Michael J. Fox, not my favorite actor by a long-shot.

My first column mug shot: Hotter than MJF?

But in this one, which reminds me of a story from my own life, he plays a hotshot young doctor who longs to leave the drudgery of the emergency room and finally leaps at his chance at more money and less work on the West Coast. But along the way he gets off the Interstate and smashes his 1956 Porsche Roadster into a judge’s fence and is forced into community service at the small town of Grady, South Carolina’s general hospital.

There he meets and falls in love with an ambulance driver named Viloula but called “Lou,” sexy and smart and played by Julie Warner, who has in incredible nude scene emerging from one of Grady’s famous fishing lakes. The town is also known for its squash, which the mayor uses to explain a slice of life in his attempt to lure the doc to stay in town – as he bets him $10 that he will not score with Lou.

The story is perhaps just a bit too cute for serious movie critics. But it reminds me of a time when I was 23-years-old and just out of college working in a small town at my first professional newspaper reporting job.

It was 1984. The town was Bay Minette, Alabama. The paper was The Baldwin Times.

Upon graduating from the University of Alabama in Bear Bryant’s last year, I had lofty goals of one day working for a great newspaper like the New York Times. But in those days, the mobility of college students was far more limited than it is today.

I advised students at Loyola New Orleans from 2000-2002 who were able to make the leap to New York, DC and LA. But being poor and from Alabama during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president, and George Wallace’s last term as governor, some of the best opportunities to break into newspapering came working for weeklies in small towns across the South.

The movie about Grady reminds me of those times, not because the stories are totally similar, but because some of the experiences and emotions ring true of being a young person trying to decide whether to make a life in a small town, where the living can be easy but perhaps not so lucrative, or making a break for the big city life and the big time bucks.

I also have to laugh at all the machinations people in small Southern towns will go to trying to lure young professionals to stay. This kind of scene plays out, still, in many towns across the country, as the out migration of the young and educated continues apace today. It is as true of Alabama today as it was in 1984, I’m sure, and can lead to some incredibly funny stories.

There’s not enough space and time here to tell them all. Maybe one day if I get around to writing a memoir.

Let’s just say I had a number of experiences with young women there, like Lou, who either wanted to seduce me to stay in Bay Minette – or to hook up with someone who could get them out.

I’m thinking of one particular young woman now about my age at the time who openly displayed a crush on me. I won’t reveal her name. She may still be there – or maybe she got out.

One night she displayed this crush a little too openly at a Christmas party, held at the Holly Hills Country Club, when, after a few too many glasses of wine, she tripped on the hem of her long dress and fell right into my arms. It was a classic scene of a drunken Southern debutante right out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald or Tom Wolfe novel. As she fell toward me – and I still recall the scene in real-life slow motion, in part probably due to my own inebriation – the top of her bright red dress slipped down off her left breast, fully exposing the nipple for virtually everyone at the party to see.

It bordered on a scandal, since she also happened to be the chamber of commerce president’s daughter, making her the perfect ambassador to try grabbing me for life. Perhaps like Doc Hollywood I should have more actively pursued that road, but there were complications.

Now at 50, do I harbor any regrets about leaving small town life there?

Only one. And it happened many years later.

In 2002, back when it was announced that the Alabama governor’s race results came down to 3,000 votes in Bay Minette, I went back there from New Orleans for The New York Times – to investigate the election.

But when Siegelman conceded, I was pulled out of Bay Minette and sent back to New Orleans.

Knowing what I know now, since the Jill Simpson affidavit came to light, I wish I had stayed and worked my sources. I learned how to cover a courthouse and develop sources there, in that courthouse. It was the best school in the world for getting hands-on experience in that world, in more ways than one. Don’t even ask about the secretaries in those days.

But of course it takes time and money to really work a story like the election, just as it takes time and money to work up a full scale relationship with a fine smart woman – in a small town or anywhere else.

And in the news game, there ain’t never enough time – or money.

Life blogs on…

Now that I think about it, there’s plenty of craziness to go around and write about in this world. And it’s not all in the South.

I’m thinking now of a crazy New York editor, a woman, in part a figment of my imagination.

And I’m also thinking, if I had stayed in Bay Minette, either time, none of this would have ever happened – the good or the bad. Perhaps there is no stopping fate in any event – if there is such a thing.

I’m not convinced.

Life is not like a box of chocolates or cherries. It’s more like a full-blown meal.

How good it turns out to be any given time is complicated and turns on choices and chance, luck and timing.

It can be as scrumptious as the fried green tomatoes in mushroom sauce at Jacquimo’s in New Orleans, or as spare as the BLT at the drugstore in Bay Minette.

And I’m convinced, politics and government do matter – in all kinds of ways many people don’t even seem to fathom, certainly not in a crazy place like Alabama. Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try to break out – or to try making a difference here.

Maybe you have to be a little crazy to try making art – or a living – as a writer in this world, if you didn’t start out in it rich.

I can only wish good luck to the striking writers in New York and LA. I hope they win that fight to get part of the proceeds from sales on the Web Press. One of these days maybe I’ll get a share of my own in that world, after we get rid of George W. Bush.

I understand Childress did it while working a day gig at Southern Living, not exactly a bastion of great journalism.

Long live the movies…

Universal

Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in “Charlie Wilson’s War”

Editor’s Note: While critics on the right would like to downplay Rep. Charlie Wilson’s role in the Afghan conflict in the interest of elevating Ronald Reagan’s legacy of ending the Cold War to Mt. Rushmore status, this book and movie make clear that there would be no Reagan legacy on that front without Wilson. What a shocker it must be for them to learn that a liberal Democrat had more to do with it than Reagan. And while critics on the left say Wilson’s war set the stage for 9-11, the book and movie make clear that was not Wilson’s fault. He could not get Congress to allocate a mere $1 million to rebuild schools in Afghanistan. One of the most worthy historical lessons brought out by this film – a film a tad short on sex for this editor’s taste – was the accurate portrayal of American politics in an era when it was still acceptable to “pursue happiness” as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Since Bill Clinton’s dalliances in the Oval Office, the Christian Right, the GOP and George W. Bush have just about eliminated fun and freedom in American life and politics.

Review by Henry Rosenbush

In a holiday season filled with forged presidential documents, aliens and predators, colorful computerized mythical creatures and animated chipmunks, it is refreshing to find an adult film capable of balancing a human story against the backdrop of politics and war.

Not the Iraq War, but the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Based on the bestseller by the late George Crile, “Charlie Wilson’s War” is a rare film that, in Frank Capra’s lone man against the world scenario, a rare liberal Democrat Congressman from Texas who still knew how to have fun took on seemingly overwhelming odds and perhaps deserves more credit for the West’s triumph over the Soviet Union in the Cold War than Ronald Reagan.

In the Bush era when the oversaturation of television spots and trailers has dispensed with much of the sardonic wit in this world, this is a fresh drama masquerading as a comedy. At times a blurry surrealism takes shape, especially when director Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Catch-22) juxtaposes real war blown up to grainy echoes of the superiority of the Russian planes and helicopters decimating villages, people and animals with modern day recreations and obvious computer-generated explosions and tracer trails.

Nichols and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin introduce Charlie, wonderfully rendered by Tom Hanks, in a Las Vegas hot tub with three naked women and another man, all snorting cocaine and having fun like Americans still knew how to do in the 1980s. In an astonishing admission, Wilson reveals himself to be a Democratic Congressman from East Texas. The other man is interested in getting a dubious project bankrolled while “Good Time Charlie,” as he is known, is enjoying repartee with the three nubile beauties, later dubbed “Charlie’s Angels.”

In a real-life subplot, Wilson will later escape charges of drug use and sundry sexual peccadilloes that are glossed over in the film with aplomb.

In a pure movie moment, Charlie becomes seduced by a television image of Dan Rather reporting on the decidedly one-sided war at a point in time when the U.S. is not supporting the Afghan Mujahedeen against the Soviets. Clearly it is an epiphany for both Charlie and the audience as we see a man drunk on Scotch and high on cocaine suddenly transformed by something far bigger than himself and the realization that something should be done.

Through a series of events, Charlie is summoned by “the sixth richest woman in Texas,” Joanne Herring, a snazzy perf by Julia Roberts – still looking great in a quick bikini shot. Her overriding concern is a defeat against the Russians and that Charlie, who sits on strategic committees, can get funding for weapons support.

In a closeup shot with Herring straightening her eyelashes with a safety pin in a vanity mirror, while educating Hanks about the war, he is submerged in her bathtub with a yellow rubber duck. The scene is both hilarious and subtlety frightening in its realism.

Again, history will bear out what actually occurred, leading to the Russian withdrawal in 1989; soon the Berlin Wall would fall – along with the Cold War.

Within the context of the movie, however, is a different animal, with Hanks delivering clever dialogue and rapid fire double-entendres, especially when engaged with Roberts and Seymour Philip Hoffman as Gust Avrakotos. Hoffman’s portrayal of the CIA agent who helped Wilson and the Mujahedeen could produce a second Oscar on the heals of his win for “Capote.”

He not only sets the screen on fire with every syllable but pisses out the flames himself. Few actors could make the act of being called a motherfucker charming, but he manages to succeed. His gruff CIA-op is profane and incorrigible, but if you want to start a covert war, he is the top choice. His scenes are searing in their directness yet believable.

At the half hour mark we travel to the Afghanistan (actually Morocco doubling nicely) capital to meet with the President Zia (a silky Om Puri) and then to a refugee camp where Charlie and his assistant, Bonnie Bach, the perky and adoring Amy Adams, simultaneously starring in “Enchanted,” witness firsthand the carnage. In a startling shot, the camera of Stephen Goldblatt reveals a huge valley of tents with thousands of wounded and dying against the backdrop of unforgiving mountains.

Kudos to production designer Victor Kempster, editing by John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen and James Newton-Howard’s superb score for enhancing the top-notch film. It shines in all departments, and although there could have been more, it comes in at a brisk 97 minutes. I suspect the film makers knew they had a good thing going with the steady influx of humor during most of the running time, and that whenever dismembered children or innocent farmers are being strafed by attack copters onscreen, less was more. When the denouement is revealed there will be no more laughter.

As in his black comedy “Catch-22,” Nichols has a companion piece with the absurdity of war and politics and the one sane person surrounded by increasingly insane characters. In the earlier film illicit activities in the military and government services underlined a dark tale, as black humorous as any movie I saw in my early teens, where even a man cut in half by a low flying plane while standing in a boat comes off as both startling and funny as hell.

Getting jibes at liberals, conservative Christians, Republicans and Democrats in even measure – while not sparing Israeli and Muslem paranoia – it is always handled with humor. Much of the film’s success lies in the sheer number of laughs. Hoffman is so funny we forget he kills people for a living.

The sexual liaisons are deftly handled with minimal nudity which along with the dollops of bawdy innuendos warrants the R rating, but the story is at heart an unrequited love story between Charlie and Joanne set against the bigger picture of conflict across the globe.

Charlie’s Angels, who handle the secretarial duties, are a quartet of impossibly gorgeous women who could together form the genus of an entire movie subplot and are portrayed by Wynn Everett, Mary Bonner Baker, Rachel Nichols and Shiri Appleby. While somewhat of an outrageous subtext surrounding himself with a bevy of unbuttoned-bloused hotties, it is undeniable that their presence ratchets up the seamy element of Charlie’s life outside the office. They are probably – one hopefully surmises – merely a cinematic wet dream rather than a feminist deconstruction of the male conception of secretarial fantasy. They are also smart, all pitching in with Bonnie to pen his press releases on the allegations of congressional misconduct.

There are stirring moments as the Afghans down their first three helicopters, and Ned Beatty has an nice turn as the Christian moral Doc Long, who too is transformed and delivers a rousing speech promising help from America. His vote was essential to the successful covert mission. Funding would go from $5 million to $1 billion dollars before the conflict’s end.

With echoes of “Catch-22″ some 37 years later, Nichols has fashioned a superb film that mixes absurdist comedy with realism to concoct a recipe that feeds the mind with delicacies peppered spicily. Bring plenty of (small) sodas.

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Originally published at RosenbushCafe.Com

One Ring to rule them all,
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.

Will the light win out over the darkness?
Is the one who claims to be the Lord of light
Really the Lord of evil?
Will good triumph over evil?

Stay tuned….
Long Live Ted Turner!