"Charlie Wilson's War" (2007)

My Netflix queue is generally filled with a lot of old, lesser-known, forgotten, or foreign movies. That just tends to be my taste. I usually am attracted to stories, and can be intrigued by certain directors and actors. I've always liked Tom Hanks. In fact, that he has become one of the film industry's biggest and most bankable stars is something that I never expected years ago when he was doing stuff like "Splash" and "Bachelor Party". He is not a hearthrob by any means. Yet he makes good movies most of the time, and "Charlie Wilson's War" is one of those films, based on a book and presumably some degree of truth, that catches my attention. Why? Because honestly, it demonstrates how some of the bigger and most unusual decisions in government have beginnings that are suspicious and questionable, if not outright misguided. Tom Hanks plays a congressman from Texas who hasn't accomplished a whole lot in his career, makes embarrassing decisions, but tends to get re-elected on sheer likability and I assume lack of strong opposition. I probably don't need to elaborate on why that particular aspect of the story is near and dear to my heart. What also resonates for me is that Wilson basically starts a covert war purely by a situation grabbing his attention, and he wheels and deals support for his cause that snowballs from a $5 million budget appropriation to one-hundred times that. Somebody somewhere once said that people would be very disturbed by how their sausage and politics are made, and "Charlie Wilson's War" is a not-so-subtle reminder of that. Julie Roberts plays kind of an odd role- she really isn't in the movie that much, and Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the consummate behind-the-scenes mover. The film ends rather abruptly, but still made me chuckle because I believe there have been over the years some decisions made in Grand Ronde that also were personality driven.