It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Hanks does wonderful with Wilson's TX accent and playboy personality, sarcastic wit and character development. Philip Seymour Hoffman's character is just totally hilarious. I loved when Hanks/Wilson asking him "Do you drink?" and he said, "Oh God, yeah!"SPOILER ALERTAs for accuracy, I don't understand the criticism of another reviewer that the film doesn't address "that the funding of the Afghan rebels led directly to the formation of Al-Qaeda and all that followed." Uhhhh, not exactly. 1. It was the sudden withdrawal of US support once Russia exited Afghanistan that left the power vacuum that was filled by al-Qaeda. 2. The film did allude to that in 2 ways; development in the plot that the funding suddenly reduced once the Commies were gone and the end on screen text that said "We f-d up the endplay."

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is celebrated by the clandestine services. The movies flashbacks to the early 1980s. Playboy Texas minor congressman Charlie Wilson gets interested in the struggles of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Bonnie Bach (Amy Adams) is his executive assistant. He is pushed by his wealthy supporter Houston socialite Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) and assisted by maverick CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman).Tom Hanks is fine but I wish he is acting bigger and brasher. Julia Roberts is not nearly acting big enough for a Texas socialite. The hair is big but she's not wild enough. They are playing it a bit too safe for a satire. The thing is that I never bought into its realism either. PSH ups the fun factor with his acting. The movie is not jokey enough to be funny. Neither is it harsh enough. Considering 9/11 at the top of every audience's mindset, it could have hit a lot harder. It's somewhere in the lumpy middle. The film leaves only a couple of scenes for the post-Soviet Afghanistan. That could be a compelling switch in his character but it gets short-changed.

Charlie Wilson isn't your stereotypical congressman; he likes to party and staffs his office entirely with attractive young woman; however he doesn't make promises he can't keep. One day, while in a Las Vegas Jacuzzi with a couple of strippers, he sees a news report from Afghanistan; seeing the people there standing up to the might of the Red Army he decides they need more support and on his return to Washington immediately doubles the funding for covert arms supplies to the Mujahideen to a still small ten million dollars. This act gets the attention of Joanne Herring; a very wealthy woman who is passionate about the cause; she wants even more and arranges for Charlie to go to Pakistan to talk to President Zia-ul-Haq who in turn sends him to see the conditions in the refugee camps on the border. Charlie is determined that the fighters must be given modern weapons and sets about meeting the people that can make this happen; this includes a brash CIA man by the name of Gust Avrakotos and an unlikely alliance of Israeli, Egyptian and Pakistani officials. If this wasn't enough he also has to deal with a possible inquiry into an allegation that he used cocaine.One might think a film about raising funds wouldn't be all that interesting but this is a lot of fun… as well as being surprisingly funny. This is largely down to Tom Hanks' performance as the larger than life Charlie Wilson and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the hilariously offensive Gust Avrakotos; not the sort of characters one would have associated with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. It isn't all laughs though; we are told about the suffering of the Afghan people and without labouring the point there are dark hints that America hasn't heard the last of Afghanistan just because the Red Army was defeated and the Soviet Union collapsed. Overall this was a surprisingly entertaining film that I found well worth watching.

This movie presents extremely one-sided view on the Afghan war. I don't know if this is normal for the North American take on the situation, but for me it looks incredibly ignorant. Russians are rapists, ruthless invaders who's taking their joy in killing children and destroying peaceful villages. I struggled to find irony there but failed.I hope no one takes this movie as an accurate depiction of this conflict. I hope you'll make your research, you'll look at the pictures of dead youngsters who were thrown into this political mess without proper training or equipment (hello, mandatory draft). A lot of Russian families lost their sons and fathers to this war and they even had no reason to justify the loss.The movie itself is okay. Acting is mostly good (Philip Seymour Hoffman kills it like he always does), story is engaging, dialogues are witty and robust. The finale made the overall ignorance somehow less offensive. The ball keeps bouncing, doesn't it?But the way the movie portraits the motives of Russians is disgusting. I'm pretty sure some people who watched this thought it was accurate and I find this disastrous.