Rating: MM

Review of “W.” first published in November 2008 issue of Spark*, the newspaper of Reading University Students’ Union.

Director: Oliver Stone
Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, James Dreyfus, James Cromwell
Running time: 129 mins

Oliver Stone’s long anticipated biopic of President George W. Bush, simply titled “W.” is finally here. I’d like to be able to say that its worth the wait, but sadly it just isn’t. From the get-go “W.” just doesn’t feel right, with a sense of uncomfortable awkwardness lurking in the background like Sarah Palin on Obama’s victorious election night. The film’s first proper scene has all the ingredients of a snappy opening salvo, yet the cast’s efforts simply fall flat. Stone hasn’t been able to get the tone right, with the film seeming like it just can’t make up its mind what it wants to be (an eerie echo of Bush’s early life and career), an out-and-out mocking indictment of the bumbling President we all love to hate or a more insightful and sympathetic drama telling his life story. In light of all the pastiches of Dubya that we have been exposed to over the years, it would have been far more interesting to watch a Frank Darabont-style portrait of the President’s life (although this again would have been hard to stomach and would arguably been shamelessly partisan). Stone instead presents us with an amalgam of the two that just doesn’t work.

Having said this, the cast do well with what they’re given. Josh Brolin in the title role is very good (he even has Bush’s walk uncannily spot-on), as is Elizabeth Banks as First Lady Laura Bush. Thandie Newton, although having a small role is so convincing as Condoleezza Rice that I thought at first it really was her. However, James Cromwell as George Bush Snr. is a let-down, seemingly pulling the same pained expression of paternal disappointment when addressing his son throughout the entire film. This though, the sense of disapproval and constant disapproval from his father that Dubya lives with does inspire some sympathy. It seems all he wants to do is make ‘Poppy’ proud of him, try to be the perfect son and move out of the shadow of his older brother Jeb. It is from this, and some other genuinely poignant scenes that we see Bush as just a simple guy, way out of his depth, trying to do the right thing but getting things very very wrong. In Stone’s presentation of this we find the most uncomfortable scenes of the film which, simultaneously are the funniest – but then that’s not saying much, as the only comedy to be found is in the gaffes made by Bush or the dark irony of the ill-judged foreign policy cabinet meetings. And these meetings in fact, despite a few witty remarks were very uncomfortable to watch, seeing an inept and falsely elected government take steps to effectively legalise torture (evidential in the treatment of the prisoners of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay) and start an illegal war for oil and empire on false grounds without a second UN resolution and with no exit strategy whatsoever. Disappointingly it must be said that Oliver Stone, a director who has in the past dealt with lives of Presidents (Richard Nixon, JFK) with flair and intensity has really misfired with this one.

Rating: MM