Charlie Wilson’s War, if this is how things really work no wonder we’re in trouble.  Charlie Wilson, Tom Hanks, is a Texas congressman whose purpose in life is to drink and screw.  His office is staffed with beautiful albeit competent women with spectacular cleavage, in Charlie’s words “you can teach them to type but you can’t teach them to grow tits”.   In a Las Vegas hot tub with two naked models/strippers and a playboy playmate, Charlie catches a glimpse of Dan Rather in Afghanistan reporting on the plight of the Afghans during the Russian invasion.  The CIA involvement is a paltry five million dollars that Charlie has doubled to ten million dollars with the about the same effort that you or I buy a soda from a vending machine. A back home Texas supporter, Joanne Herring, Julia Roberts, also one of his conquests, is an enthusiastic anti-communist, anti-muslim right wing, religious conservative who persuades Charlie to visit an Afghan refugee comp.  The misery and suffering combined with the local CIA detachment’s low key approach infuriates and inspires Charlie to redouble his efforts.  The complicated negotiations, the horse swapping, the power in the hands of the inept and the oblivious, the use of sex as leverage and the general governmental mind set are at once fascinating and disheartening. The money and the power that Charlie funnels to the Afghans is managed by Gust Avrakotos, a rogue CIA agent played brilliantly by  Philip Seymour Hoffman.  In the end the weapons supplied by the US lead to the defeat of the Russians and the eventual collapse of the Soviet empire.  The consternation of the Russians when their helicopters explode in mid-air is priceless.  A major malfunction is that since it was a covert operation we didn’t tell the Afghans their friends the Americans were responsible for their salvation.  And once the cold war ended our interest in the region dissipated until September 1, 2001.  A fascinating movie.

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