W.: 131 minutes. Rated: M. Director: Oliver Stone. Starring: Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Elizabeth Banks, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright
In 2006 I reviewed Oliver Stone's then most recent film, World Trade Centre, about the destruction of New York City's Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. I suggested none too subtly that Stone had lost his nerve; that he had taken a 'gutless, "safe" approach'.
It was, perhaps, unfair of me. But my words speak to the power of expectations. Stone traditionally wields his left-wing agenda like a sledgehammer. But with WTC his approach was moderate. As one reader noted, it's absurd that a film's most controversial feature should be that it's uncontroversial.
With that in mind, those who expect W., Stone's biopic about George W. Bush, to be a portrait of a monster, will be disappointed. Stone's Bush is not exactly sympathetic. But he is human. And, damn it, he is even likeable.
As swaggeringly portrayed by Josh Brolin, W. is the proverbial black sheep of the Bush family: overshadowed by his gold-fleeced brother Jeb; ceaselessly and vainly seeking his father's (Cromwell) approval. He is passionate and affable, with a cowboy's wit and charm.
Cowboy, indeed. Stone draws selectively from W's history to play up this aspect of his persona. The youthful W. is shown as a hard-drinking, spoilt, delinquent frat boy. Later, he walks off his job at an oilrig rather than suffer the belligerence of a bullying boss.
The film's pretzel-like structure curls back and forth between such formative moments from W's youth and a pertinent period of W's presidential tenure. The events of September 11 are not portrayed, yet they are the salt grain around which the pretzel curls. When the film commences Bush is hitting his stride as a 'war' president. Afghanistan has been invaded. The newly confident President Bush and his cronies are contemplating the invasion of Iraq.
Stone makes a feature of Bush's middling intellect, and he is portrayed as an overzealous (perhaps deluded) and impressionable president, convinced that he's on a mission from God and easily manipulated, notably by Vice President Cheney (Dreyfuss). But usually, he seems to be genuinely well-intentioned.
W. may be evenhanded, but Stone can't resist the occasional ironic dig. When W. is revelling in a sense of heroic derring-do, the spritely 'Robin Hood', by Dick James with Stephen James and His Chums, starts jangling on the soundtrack. Such winks at the audience are