W: Too Little Too Soon

October 20 2008 01:05 Filed in: Movies
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“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” - George W. Bush

I say with all due respect that if there was anyone qualified to be the Hollywood hatchet man to take whack at one of the most hated presidents in U.S. history, Oliver Stone would be the one. However, I was a little taken aback by the fact the man who brought us such intensely powerful films as Platoon, JFK, and Born on the Fourth of July has given us a film like W, almost as lightweight of an epic as the intellect of the man who’s biography is being portrayed.

Of the 77% of the country that currently at best disapproves of Bush and at worst think he is the devil incarnate, the film is going to either make you angry or nauseated. What worried me going into W is that it was going to be an all out assault on Bush portraying him as an evil dictator wannabe. In reality, Michael Moore already did this with Faharenheit 911, and did it pretty damned effectively.

What surprised me about W was that Stone made Bush into a sympathetic character. Not evil, but a kind of a simple, likeable loser who manages to be just smart enough pull himself into some sort of respectability with the help of his family name and fortune.

There’s an honestly noble and tragic quality to his story. We see the desperate struggle of a man to gain the approval of his father and to move out from under the shadow of his successful brother. Bush doesn’t have much going for him other than this motivation and a seemingly near photographic memory that gets him through a lot, not the least of which his sudden and almost inexplicable quick rise in politics.

His incredible success in the 1990s after a lifetime of failures due to lack of motivation and a struggle with booze manages to boost his ego and put him into the presidency. Surrounded by people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s ego doesn’t allow him to realize he’s being manipulated by those around him.
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Granted, I’m not in any way a fan of Bush, but I’m good with the fact that I came out of the film not disliking him as much as when I went in. In fact, I think it was a pretty fair play of Stone not too stick the dagger in too far. It’s still not a flattering portrait of the President and will still leave you in a sense of disbelief that such a narrow-minded and simple man could achieve the most powerful position in the world.

The real problem with W lies in the fact that it doesn’t have any real substance to replace it’s lack of sharp teeth. There’s no real character drama in W and many of the lead performances are embarrassingly bad, which is a true surprise to see in a Stone film.

In the opening scenes some of the issues with the performances come to light in a staff meeting with all the usual suspects from the Bush White House. The real weaknesses come from the inexplicably misguided portrayals of Condoleeza Rice, played by Thandie Newton and Colin Powell, played by Jeffrey Wright. When you’re trying to portray a living person, especially one that’s fairly well known, it’s always a consideration as to how much you want to “imitate” a person as opposed to capture the character. Unfortunately, Newton and Wright do neither. Both are so horrifically bad and unbelievable that shortly into the film I found myself cringing every time one of them had any dialogue. While every attempt was made to make them look like Rice and Powell, their portrayals were neither authentic nor were they even acceptable imitations. They were both terrible charicatures rather than characters. There was absolutely no human relatability to them as people or the people they were playing.

Josh Brolin’s Bush was tolerable, but not much better. He managed to capture Bush’s “essence” more in the form of an outstanding imitation than anything else. The ultimate effect on the screen turns out to be that any time you get them all on screen together it was like watching a rather unfunny Saturday Night Live skit. I was almost waiting for one of the frequent staff meetings in W to end with “Live from New York…”

I don’t understand what Oliver Stone’s thought process was. By the end of the film, I was still just sitting in horrified disbelief listening to Thandie Newton deliver lines in some alien nasal voice that was a reminiscent of Lily Tomlin’s Ernestine, the Telephone Operator. I try not to be unduly cruel when I evaluate films and actors, but she was despicably bad.

On the flip side of the coin, we did have two outstanding performances that managed to drag things out of this “cartoonish” feel. James Cromwell and Richard Dreyfuss are brilliant as George Bush,sr and Dick Cheney. Cromwell doesn’t in any way try to imitate the elder Bush, but instead gives a thoughtful performance and definitely the most deeply realized and sympathetic character in the film. Dreyfuss manages to strike a very good balance between visible resemblance to Cheney and an authentic capture of pure “Cheneyness.” I’m not exactly sure what that is, but it’s kind of a snarling, unlikable essence of asshole. He’s delightful to watch in the role.

Rounding out the Bush gang are Bruce McGill who is actually rather good as George Tenet and Toby Jones, who gives a rather underplayed performance as the geeky brains behind Bush’s political rise, Karl Rove.

Beyond that the complete and utter “parody” feel of the film along with a complete lack of chemistry among most of the cast is really the downfall of W. I honestly think that even had this not been the case, it may just really be too soon for this movie. I can’t see it having any effect whatsoever on the election and I just think it’s much too early to be able to put the Bush presidency into perspective. I think Stone hops back and forth so much between Bush’s early life, rise to fame and the shaping of his presidential legacy in the form of the Iraq War that there never does seem to be any solid focus.

I can’t recommend W to Bush supporters, Bush haters or really to anyone in-between. It’s not among Stone’s best. Maybe history will treat the film more kindly than it will treat Bush’s legacy.-between. It’s not among Stone’s best. Maybe history will treat the film more kindly than it will treat Bush’s legacy.

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