W. Movie Review

W. (2008)

Rent W. on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Stanley Weiser
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Starring: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ioan Gruffudd, Toby Jones, Colin Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Scott Glenn, Richard Dreyfuss, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, Noah Wyle, Rob Corddry, Stacy Keach
Rated: PG-13
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Plot
A chronicle of the life and Presidency of George W. Bush.

Verdict
It's got a huge cast and takes a long time to keep telling us that W. is always trying to please his father. This creates an image of the world handed to the younger Bush, but I wasn't quite sure if that was all the movie wanted the viewer to conclude. From that standpoint it's unbiased. This doesn't portray Bush as a bumbling idiot, more as disinterested. It doesn't excuse his actions, just reveals how he was manipulated, though it also doesn't cover all the major milestones. With the length, I was wishing it was over long before the actual ending.

My initial reaction was to skip this, but while writing the review I realized the movie does make interesting points about the advantages Bush had and how that propelled him to success.
It depends.

Review
The cast is absolutely packed, though it's more name dropping than delivering great performances with so many bit parts. Brolin is the only one that gets enough screen time to act with other actors showing up sporadically. Josh Brolin manages to play Bush at fifty-eight and twenty, going from the White House to a frat house. That sentence might best encapsulate the movie.

The movie seems to be more of an indictment on how money and influence can take you all the way to the White House rather than focusing on Bush's shortcomings. Bush's father was a career politician and used his connections to bail 'Junior' out of jail, get him into great schools, and set him up with various jobs. Bush couldn't hold a job, and it's easy to infer he thinks he's too good for some of those jobs. The movie frequently cuts to Bush daydreaming he's playing major league baseball. He lived a bit of a fantasy. His goal was never to become President, but to impress his father. That's a point the movie makes many times. The movie gets a bit long as that point is repeated often.

While the media liked to portray Bush as a bit dumb, this movie doesn't do that. He's not dumb, he just doesn't care. He's a guy that's never had to worry about repercussion or being careful because his father acted as a safety net. He's easily manipulated, but I infer that's in part because his father directed him in life. From what we see in this movie Bush's whole life was lived on cruise control. Bush wanted to be President to prove something to his father, but Bush doesn't realize his father paved that entire road.

This recounts history a bit, showing why Bush thought Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and how Cheney pulled some strings, but it avoids Bush's highlights of how he handed the 9-11 attack. Bush listened to people that had their own interests in mind, and with Bush's 'aww shucks' attitude he was easily manipulated.

The movie feels more scatted as it progresses. I wasn't sure why it was still going towards the end. The points had been made. The conclusion seems to be that Bush had an unfair advantage. Despite his mistakes he was able to succeed in life because his father pulled strings. You could argue Bush accomplished very little because he rode his father's coattails the entire way. Bush wants to step out of his father's shadow, but without his father Bush may not have had anything.

In one of Bush's first political campaigns, the 1978 race for the House, his opponent Kent Hance portrays him as out of touch with Texas for having gone to ivy league schools and living outside of Texas for so long. The truth of it is, Bush had unfair advantages to get in those schools and succeed despite his failures. He wasn't just out of touch, he had a lottery ticket that few people ever get. Bush's early mistakes would have squashed the chances of a typical person that works for a living. Maybe that's the point of the movie. Bush's 'good old boy' depiction is a bit of a farce. His common man facade and working on his ranch is a farce.