Charlie Wilson's War is a film rich with personalities. This should come as no surprise to those familiar with director Mike Nichols' work. From The Graduate to Closer, Nichols always presents detailed persons, populating scenarios comfortable for conversation. That's his milieu, faces and words. And Charlie Wilson's War,a sort of politico drawing room comedy/drama, based on actual persons and events, lends its self perfectly to his treatment.

      The screenplay is by Aaron Sorkin, creator of beloved TV series The West Wing. In his television work Sorkin presented an idealized Washington, not quite Utopist, but better intentioned than any cynic might suppose. The Washington of Charlie Wilson; Regan era, energized by clear outside threats and intoxicated by a sense of sustainable status quo, is the perfect time and place for a writer like Sorkin to frame a covert crusade built mostly on intimations and favors.

      Wilson, a real former congressman, played by Tom Hanks as an unflinching but basically decent hedonist politician, believes in his country, his position and the functioning of politics for the good. One can sense, particularly in a scene where he implicitly accepts sex with Julia Roberts, cool and controlled as a crusading humanitarian debutant, in return for his help as member of a subcommittee that could aid her pet cause, that he exists in a tangled web of influence, power and petulance, which he absolutely adores. The dialogue in this scene, switching imperceptibly between subjects of flesh and politics, recalls the high-tone naughtiness of Preston Sturgess.

      The source of the drama is the, then ongoing, resistance of Afghani rebels to Soviet invasion. As Wilson comes to the crisis America has verbally supported the Afghanis but sparingly otherwise, not wanting to, "draw attention," as Wilson is told when he enquires of the CIA station chief in Pakistan, what is needed to give the rebels an edge.

      Sorkin's script and Nichols's direction are very good, but only amount to half the story. Mention of their names likely brings great actors from the woodwork. Thus, along with Hanks and Roberts, we are given Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a volatile but able CIA agent, just denied an expected appointment. As we meet him he is leading toward an actor's dream scene where he dresses down his boss and breaks a window. In lesser hands this moment of prolonged catharsis would've devolved into scenery chewing. But Hoffman manages the line between gusto and histrionics without losing his character's personality. 

      The main weakness of the film are the battle scenes, which alternate between sterile and tech-y and just downright awkward. The scenes unforgivably take time from the faces. Though they do end quickly. Which reflects yet another of the movie's strengths. Nothing in this film is overplayed or labored. Plot devices are introduced, used to their effect and ushered off. Characters come and go and, played with confidence by experienced actors, don't require excess face time or empty lines to be sympathetic and memorable. Everything proceeds with an admirable field-military efficiency, at no cost of effectiveness.