Charlie Wilson's War: A Movie By and About Heroes

Charlie Wilson's War is a movie that took many heroes to make. George Crile, the amazing journalist/war reporter who wrote the book, Aaron Sorkin who has a knack for bringing unpleasant truths to the general public, Mike Nichols who does the same and manages to apply his incredible humor to them to make them palatable. Then there is Charlie Wilson himself, his helpmate Gust Avrakotos, his inspiration, Joanne Herring, Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts who use their celebrity to encourage large numbers to consider what their government has been up to and what it may be up to.

I just completed a review for the Glendale News-Press. It is schedule to run Thursday, Dec. 28, for those who would like to see the entire thing. Here is a quotation from it:

"When Joanne questions him about the covert war they have just engineered, Charlie says, "There has never been anything like it . . . ." And there may not be. Charlie's War has its proud moments, its amazing moments, and many, many funny ones. But then there's that other sad thing about this movie, besides the fact that Crile never got to see his story on the screen. It's that that the war portrayed is really only unusual in its aspect of David-with-money against an unsuspecting Goliath. Since WWII there have been more than 300 so-called conflicts (as counted by the Red Cross in attendance) similar to the Afghan-Soviet war. Refugees. Suffering of children. Horrors unmentionable on the parts of the military and their governments. Unlike WWII -- a war we left with dignity -- we left this Afghan war and many other conflicts callously with little or no care for the war-stricken. We left them mo peace. Much poverty. We left them seeds for radicalism."

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson occasionally reviews movies for the Glendale News-Press, an LA Times affiliate. She wrote the foreword for Eric Dinyer's book of patriotic quotations, Support Our Troops, published by Andrews McMeel. Part of the proceeds for the book benefit Fisher House. Her chapbook of poetry won the Military Writers Society of America's award of excellence.