Early 1980s. Charlie Wilson is a relatively unimportant and unproductive Texas congressman. He does have one advantage - he is on two important committees, covering foreign and military policy. He learns of the situation in Afghanistan and how the Russians are treating the Afghanis and is determined to help, through providing the Mujahideen with weapons. This sets in motion an unlikely sequence of deals and alliances. Excellent movie. Covers an important series of events in world history, the short-term consequences of which were positive, the long term less so. Does so in very light, funny fashion. This highlights the farcicalness of some of the events, and helps the story move along. It would have been a very dry movie if it was entirely serious.Despite the non-seriousness of much of the movie, has a very powerful and profound final message.Great acting by Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and, especially, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Sadly this is an educational and extremely entertaining movie. Some people say that it is propaganda and that it bias to the Americans war effort in Afghanistan. Obviously they didn't have the brains to watch this movie all the way through. It shows how the USA clearly shot itself in the foot by arming the mujahideen and testing it's weapons against the Soviet army only to leave them cold in a war torn country with no education and a future the would see them attack the USA in the most terrifying fashion in modern history. The Soviet army invades Afghanistan in order to bring in a communist state and is engaged in a war with the mujahideen displacing many of the citizens of this country making them refugees. Charlie Wilson, a US senator is bought to the attention of this situation and decides that he must convince the US government to help dislodge the Soviets through arming the insurgents. Of course the US government is more than happy to try an array of its weapons without creating an international incident. This is an very well made and educational movie that made me sad for the Afghans and quite angry at the US government for the lack of care following this war but i sympathise with Charlie Wilson who had a full heart during and after the conflict but was powerless to help Afghanistan recover. A must see for the younger generation especially. I fpund it a very entertaining piece of cinema. It could of paid more attention to detail but it would of made this flick too ling.

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."

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.