 Disappointing, too long, insincere, these are words that best describe two things: the presidency of one George W. Bush and the film W., directed by Oliver Stone and starring Josh Brolin, Richard Dreyfus, James Cromwell and Thandie Newton among others, based on that very same person. While this film rightfully garnered quite a bit of attention thanks to it being released in the heart of election season and also thanks to the fact that the president the film is about is still in office, I was not expecting these two facts to still be the most interesting things once I had seen W.
W. follows Bush from his college days up until the beginning of the war in Iraq. It begins with him as president discussing whether or not “Axis of Evil” is an appropriate title for countries like Iran and North Korea with Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the usual suspects and flashes back from time to time to Bush’s days as a drunk frat boy, a drunk and disrespectful worker on an oil rig, a drunk candidate for congress and an owner of a baseball, a time during which I’m not sure of his level of drunkenness. These flashback-like scenes are mixed in with more modern scenes of Bush and his cronies discussing how and when to invade Iraq and other oil-rich countries and whether or not weapons of mass destruction are present in said countries and for some reason also show Bush stuffing his face with various sandwiches. Maybe this is some sort if symbol for his greed and desire to consume everything in sight or something but to me it was unclear and at tines disgusting. I didn’t need my opinion of Bush sullied any further nor did I think it could be, but somehow scenes like these managed to do just that until near the end of the film when suddenly Bush was made to look like a victim for whom to feel sorry when he begins whining about his staff giving him bad information regarding the WMD’s that it turns out didn’t exist. It was at this point that I lost the little bit of hope I had left that this would be a good movie. Sure, maybe this is how it happened in real life. Maybe Bush isn’t worthy of as much blame as he’s gotten. Maybe his cabinet is. Either way, that’s not what I, or most likely anyone else was expecting going into this film. Besides, shouldn’t the leader of the free world do more than listen to what his underlings tell him and accept it as gospel? Whatever, I don’t mean to get all political here, all I’m saying is Bush sucked and for the most part so did the movie about him.
Still, not all was lost. As George W. Bush, Brolin was excellent in portraying one of the most controversial characters of our time, the rest of the characters, however, with the exception of Toby Jones playing the evil Karl Rove, were less than impressive. I felt almost as if the makers of W. focused too much on making the actors look like the real life characters and not enough time on the screenplay, which revolved mostly around Bush quotes and political situations most people have heard about too many times before. Granted, it probably still is too early for a lot of good, new dirt to come out on this regime. We’ll have to wait until Bush is out of office for more of that I’m guessing, but I just felt Stone and the other makers of this film didn’t dig deep enough. Instead of an only slightly-humorous caricature of our worst president I would have liked to see more of a focus on the dark and unbelievably dishonest side of politics that we will never underestimate again after this administration. Like Bush himself, this movie had promise but ultimately missed the mark. Kevin Meehan is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.
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