To: Me, From: Aaron Sorkin

I am an Aaron Sorkin fan. This should come as no surprise to anyone who's paid attention to this blog for a while. I felt his Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was one of the finest programs to come on TV in many a year. He is a master of dialogue; his characters may be quicker and wittier than we mortals are in day-to-day life, but we can't help but feel a kinship there, as if remembering the times when we ourselves caught the conversational rhythm and hit all our cues. I could listen to his characters forever.

Hello, Charlie Wilson's War. The film is a pretty good fit for Sorkin, dealing as it does with political intricacies (Sorkin created The West Wing) and touching upon the military (he also wrote A Few Good Men). Here we have sharp dialogue in abundance, delivered with appropriate relish by Tom Hanks, as titular congressman Wilson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the CIA operative who helps him ramp up the end of the Cold War. Hoffman is excellent as ever, and Hanks gives his best performance since Road to Perdition, which I didn't really care for, truth be told. Julia Roberts appears as a socialite who shares his cause. She also turns in some fine work, disappearing behind bleach blonde locks and a palpable sense of disassociation from the working class.

For me, the movie only falters in two spots. We get a pair of scenes where Wilson gets all teary-eyed - once over the plight of the Afghanis, again over the recent marriage of Roberts' character - that are simply unnecessary; they actually pulled me out of the film. We, the audience, could have been sold on his feelings in both cases without resorting to cheap waterworks. The only other stumbling block in Charlie Wilson's War concerns - oddly enough - the depictions of war itself. Here, director Mike Nichols oscillates between grainy news/stock footage and low quality Hollywood-ized combat sequences, the latter divided between attack helicopters firing what almost look like laser blasts(!) and "Afghani freedom fighters", clad in fake beards and the newest garb from wardrobe. Mercifully, this last bit is only on screen for a few seconds.

Ah, don't focus on the negative, for it is so minor in comparison to the rest of the flick. Surprisingly, the movie only clocks in at just over 90 minutes, something that appeals to many a movie-goer these days, myself included. However, when I was about fifteen minutes into this latest world from Aaron Sorkin, I found not only that I really didn't want it to end, but also that I hoped there would actually be an "Extended Edition" when it comes to DVD. Hey, I can dream.