- I realise the synopsis is probably unnecessary but I provide it for the sake of consistency.
- The only reason to see this movie is for Josh Brolin, who is pretty excellent in the title role. He reportedly rejected prosthetic make-up to make him look more like Bush and frankly proved that said prosthetics would have been completely unnecessary because he managed to completely embody him without them. Voice, mannerisms, everything. It’s kind of frightening when you think about it because I’m not sure that’s a mind, body, and soul I would want to spend any great length of time contemplating let alone becoming. There’s a deserved Oscar nomination in here somewhere.
- Thandie Newton, on the other hand, was absolutely ridiculous as Condoleezza Rice. It’s like a really bad SNL skit stretched out over two hours. Her mannerisms were so completely over-the-top; just watching her various facial expressions during meetings was killing me, but every time she spoke it got ten times worse. It was a complete caricature, which would have been fine if this was boldfaced, low-brow satire but everyone else in the movie seemed to have gotten the memo that this wasn’t the direction they were going to be taking with these particular characters.
- Does anyone know if Colin Powell is Catholic? Because this movie definitely canonized him. He’s presented as the sole voice of reason in Bush’s squad, the only one bothering to step back and say “Hey, what the fuck are we doing?” when it’s clear that Bush and his crackpot team are about to make some really fucking stupid decisions.
- This movie makes it clear that George Sr. is Episcopalian and not Catholic, but they canonize him nearly as much as they did Powell. He’s presented as this even-tempered, reasonable guy with good old fashioned values about honour and duty to one’s family, blah blah blah. And maybe he’s like that, who knows. What I do know is that I’m pretty sure he’s not this flawless.
- The whole Freudian daddy complex theme was pretty shallow overall and didn’t really offer anything new or insightful to what we already perceive about Bushes Sr. and Jr. The sibling rivalry between G. Dub and Jeb was somewhat enjoyable, given that it’s pretty palpable despite the fact that Jeb only gets two minutes of screen time, tops, and he’s probably twenty-one at best at the time.
- The movie does a good job in portraying Bush as having stumbled into the presidency despite clearly being not terribly fit for the job. Your gut reaction at first, especially toward the end, is that it’s really, really sad and he’s really quite pathetic and quite in over his head. The more disturbing realization is not that this man is the most powerful person on the planet but that he’s there because he was in the right place at the right time and had the right connections. He’s not there because he’s exceptionally talented or had amazing personal political experience or a fantastic vision for the future. And not only that, but that he’s an elected representative. Sure, you can have a long and drawn out debate about the legitimacy of his election, but the fact remains that huge segments of the voting population voted for this guy. Voted for him! This scares me.
- The baseball metaphor was really, really bad. Throughout the film we see Bush in an empty stadium (presumably wherever it is the Rangers play), basking in the glory of an imaginary crowd and catching imaginary fly balls just as they’re about to go over the centre field wall for a home run. This was lame but not terrible until the very final scene in the film where a fly ball is coming toward him but then he loses it in the lights and it’s gone. He hasn’t just dropped the ball, he’s lost the thing entirely. Why must Oliver Stone hit me over the head with symbolism, why?
- Speaking of which, Stone used Bob Dylan’s “With God On Our Side” in the closing credits, which I felt was more than a little heavy handed.
W.
The “W” does not stand for “WIN”, FYI.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A chronicle on the life and presidency of George W. Bush.