Critics reviews

"Charlie Wilson's War" shows the world of politics as one of crazy characters and compromise. A little diplomacy doesn't hurt, but when all else fails, maybe the only route is to use the plainest language you can. There are days when only an "Excuse me, what the fuck?" will do.

Fun is this movie’s unlikely and persuasive motto. If it’s the best politically themed movie to come around in a while, that may be because the director, Mike Nichols, and the screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, grasp that politics, for all its seriousness, is an essentially comic undertaking.

As it turns out, the previous Nichols movie this one most resembles is the 1988 romantic comedy Working Girl. Charlie Wilson’s War is a funny, sprightly tribute to the American can-do spirit.

The good: The best Hollywood movie of the year to address the War on Terror, directly or indirectly. The bad: It’s no great shakes. . . . It seems to me that the film will be reviewed according to how critics chose to interpret that final scene.