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.

The subtext of this film is that Charlie Wilson's War is still raging in Afghanistan but the USA has replaced the Soviets because they allowed a vacuum to develop in a country after the the Soviet withdrawal where the Taliban amongst other groups stepped in.Writer Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols should have gone for dark, subversive satire with Charlie Wilson, a Democrat congressman from Texas known for some good time partying who somehow built an alliance that led to a covert military campaign to arm the Mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan and repel the Soviet invaders.What we get is a strained, anaemic film with broad and uneven comedy that barely hits any targets and just about carried by the charm of its star, Tom Hanks helped by Philip Seymour Hoffman's blue collar, truculent CIA operative with Julia Roberts as a wealthy socialite and anti commie Texan with an array of international connections that helps Wilson.Maybe current events in the Middle East at the time this film was made meant that it had to pull its punches and come across as wishy washy.

so we have an all star academy award winning cast tom hanks Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman with an outrageous true story of a congressman who loves a good time drinking and taking drugs as well as his love of womanizing he loves getting into problems that is not his group of secretary's are all women two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees A puffy Tom Hanks tells us one way or another that things can be manipulated with semi pure intentions but without weighing the consequences and Julia Roberts in a blond southern hairdo reminds us of the powers harbored in the sidelines. The subject is serious but the treatment is light, intelligent but light. Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the invisible middle man, steals every scene he is in Julia Roberts has a role like a cameo popping in and out as she plays a reporter who helps Charlie see where his money can go the story is fast and witty but in a casual way this story is about one powerful American man that can get funding to help the fighter in Afghanistan against Russia But Charlie, undeterred, engineered a lethal body blow that weakened the communist empire. Without Charlie, history would be hugely and sadly different in the 1980s his help from . However, prodded by his major conservative supporter, Houston Socialite Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight the people are suffering in the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gustav "Gust" Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support to defeat the Soviet Union so with covert way to fund the war Charlie and gust go out of there way to find weapons to help from the C.I.A what a fun charming and entertaining film from mike Nichols

I am astonished that they went to the trouble of making this movie in spite of the revelations after the 9-11 tragedy. There is no acknowledgment that the funding of the Afghan rebels led directly to the formation of Al-Qaeda and all that followed. Maybe Wilson et al, are indirectly responsible for all that?So, I now wonder how these people, Wilson and Herring especially, can look themselves in the mirror or show their faces in public. Or maybe America would rather gloat over their "victory" over the Soviets?But there is merit in the writing, some great gags, some subtle twists, some quotable lines, the saddest being at the very end, where there is a tiny hint that maybe it might not really achieve what they all thought it was going to.