Somewhere amidst the strippers, cocaine and Emily Blunt’s micropanties in Charlie Wilson’s War lies the faintly-beating heart of a good political movie. That the film is entertaining, I don’t deny. That it will double Kite Runner sales is doubtless. But this T&A-centric movie is more West Wing than Syriana, fictionalizing history, soft-pedaling 9/11 blowback and coasting on Tom Hanks’ charm to set up patently false Hollywood lines.

Writer Aaron Sorkin plays his secular liberal cards early. Hanks plays Congressman Wilson as a man committed to Jesus but unwilling to tolerate a Nativity crèche on government property. Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing CIA agent Gust Avrakotos, tells off a boss who refuses to promote immigrants and simultaneously picks a side in the FOB-ABD debate: ‘I’ve had people trying to kill me for 14 years. Now is that because my dad is a Greek soda bottler, or is that because I’m a fucking American spy? I am an American, you… you child.’ He’s summoned by Wilson within days to work on Afghanistan. The audience applauds the U-S-A! moment, but in real life, Avrakotos didn’t meet Wilson until a year into the war, and initiated the meeting.

Accepting that the movie is highly fictionalized, it’s great fun. One farcical scene sees Wilson switch seamlessly between between triaging a cocaine investigation initiated by Rudy Giuliani, and getting the lowdown on the Afghanistan war from Avrakotos. Meanwhile, the CIA agent plays a trick of his own.

Om Puri, playing Gen. Zia being asked to covertly accept Israeli-captured Soviet weapons, swears in English: ‘If I see one fucking Star of David on a crate…’ (It’s been a big year for Bollywood legends and cussing.) He asks for ‘aircraft, guns and money‘ and demands power of the purse over U.S. disbursements, the seeds of the unholy alliance between the Taliban and the ISI. Rizwan Manji overacts as an Oxford-trained military advisor who hammers the U.S. for supplying Pakistan with F-16s without advanced radar, and its pitiful $5M covert ops Afghanistan budget. Parsi American actor Erick Avari plays an Israeli.

Tom Hanks interprets the role as a very particular Southern businessmen stereotype: hard-partying but competent, congenial and focused on making deals happen. He’s a skirt-chasing bachelor who glides between liaisons, making it look painless as only Hollywood can. And he gets some great lines. On campaigns: ‘Congressmen are elected by their contributors. I represent a district in Texas, but my contributors are Jews in New York, Florida and Hollywood. I’m known as a friend of Israel.’ After meeting Zia: ‘I’ve just had my ethics questioned by a guy who hanged the prime minister he overthrew in a military coup.’ Assistant Amy Adams (Enchanted) fixes dewy, starstruck eyes upon the congressman and the cause.

The movie is a good ol’ boy movie, laparoscopically fixated more on our boy Charlie Wilson than the War. It hints but never says outright that the U.S. trained and armed Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. It focuses on goings-on in D.C. rather than what happened on the ground in Afghanistan or its neighbors, Pakistan, Iran and India. It elides the fact that much of the $3.5B the U.S. eventually spent in Afghanistan went to the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, notorious for shelling his own cities and his fickle loyalties.

Here’s what you may not have heard about the real Charlie Wilson…

… when Wilson retired from the House of Representatives, he was so copacetic to Pakistani views that he went to work for Pakistan as their lobbyist — at the rate of $360,000 per year. [Link]

The [Nicaraguan] meeting broke down when [dictator Anastasio] Somoza fondled Tina Simons, who was Charlie Wilson’s girlfriend at the time. [Link]

… and the real Soviet war in Afghanistan:

… U.S. policy… unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy “to induce a Soviet military intervention.” … Brzezinski recalled: ‘We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would… That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap… The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War…’

… India… supported the Soviet invasion and provided crucial logistics and intelligence support to the Soviet army…

… in April 1988, an ammunition depot outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad was blown up killing 100 and injuring more than 1,000 people, the KHAD and KGB [were] suspected…

… the Soviets targeted children. Many of the mines positioned were shaped as “colorful toys or butterflies…” 5 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country… [Link]

As you’re watching this flick, you’ll notice its combat scenes are sexy throwbacks. The crocodilian MI-24 Hind attack helicopter, with its Klingon brow bulges for its twin turbos, fires red tracers at fake-looking people in the distance. The Russian dialogue is dated and very Top Gun. You’re just waiting for Maverick and Goose to fly bubble-to-bubble, flipping the bird to a goddamn Ruskie. You’ll remember these scenes better than when Avrakotos warns Wilson about the crazies swirling into Kabul like a bathtub drain.

This movie is an exercise in uncomplicated, feel-good patriotism which happens to be set against the backdrop of a U.S. intervention. But it could have just as easily been The Dukes of Herat, with Ned Beatty as Boss Hogg rather than Congressman Long.

Here’s the trailer:

* Movie quotes are paraphrased.

Related posts: Om Puri’s trailer, Anatomy of a Bollywood shoot