Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) and a final farewell to Philip Seymour Hoffman (part 6)
“I’d like to take a moment to review the several ways in which you’re a douche bag”
I hated Charlie Wilson’s War when I first watched it a decade or so ago and my recent re-watch as part of my ongoing odyssey for the life and career of Philip Seymour Hoffman hasn’t tempered my initial reaction. In fact, I hate it even more.
How’s that for a recommendation!
I know, I know, it’s “just a film” and although Philip Seymour Hoffman partially saves it with a tremendous performance, the Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts characters are thoroughly and despicably repugnant whilst shining a light on situations and roles within Governments and the Establishment class that persist to this day and an endless pursuit of the god of Mammon as proxy wars are waged, a world is policed and reshaped in their image, and other people’s children die in wars they fund, direct and instigate.
Here it’s the Afghanistan war with the then Soviet Union and I know I won’t make any friends with this paragraph, but whether it be the cold war or multiple proxy wars, we’ve seemingly been at war with the Soviet Union/Russia for at least the duration of my lifetime and here in 2025 we’ve just had the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth for the 3rd anniversary of the Ukraine/Russia conflict (another proxy war paid for by your tax dollars and pounds) and a war instigated not by Russia in 2022 but by an American coup in 2014. Oops, I did tell you I wouldn’t be making any new friends here, didn’t I? For you will disagree. It was an unprovoked invasion in 2022 you’ll cry. I’m probably being denounced this very minute as a “Putin Puppet” despite being a liberal lefty anti-war humanist who in today’s inverted world is now framed as a right wing peacenik! What larks eh?
But it is just a film, and a film celebrating the USA once again meddling in affairs, arming a proxy war, “the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter) and funding the “freedom fighters” of the Mujahadeen in defending both their country and against Communist Russian aggression. But then the pattern of the past continues into the future: freedom fighters become “terrorists” when a new boogeyman is required and a continuance of the forever war is required, and Osama Bin Laden (once of the Mujahadeen) had a remarkable wi-fi connection in an Afghanistan cave back in 2001 because he organised the horrific attacks on New York’s World Trade Center, and it’s Al Qaeda now, the Taliban soon enough, and then ISIS and ISIL (these pesky terrorists sure do enjoy changing their names) and because a man in a cave in Afghanistan directed the despicable attacks in New York (and beyond) well, as 15 of the 19 hijackers were born in Saudi Arabia, the USA had to bomb Iraq. Makes sense I guess.
George Carlin said it’s a “Big Club” and we ain’t in it. But I often defer to the equally late and great Bill Hicks who occasionally commenced his early gigs with a comedy bit and a rhetorical question and “How does it feel to find out WE, are the Evil Empire?”
And we are.
And we always have been.
And I haven’t made any new friends with this opening to a film review and I’m fucked If I’m changing it now.
Here’s three magnificent minutes of the one, the only, Philip Seymour Hoffman:
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY
Sedate and at peace with the working world around him we find “Henry Cravely” (John Slattery) calmly enjoying a cigarette and a cup of coffee in his office in the nerve centre of the CIA as his world is literally and figuratively about to crash in on him. Angrily entering his office for a meeting neither men wish to have and with both mistakenly believing the other is there primarily to apologise for a past contretemps, is “Gust Avrakotos” (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who immediately paces back and forth as his boss announces, in expectation of his apology, that it must be “difficult for you to come in here, hat in hand”. Cutting back to Gust, he’s stopped pacing now and instead, with hands on hips and a fixed scowl on his face, cannot believe Henry isn’t apologising to him and with a rising anger, shouts “What the fuck are you talking about?”. With tensions and tempers rising, each man trades insults with the other until Gust calls his boss a “poncy schoolboy” and is clearly not a man on a mission of apology!
A glass repairer or glazier briefly enters Henry’s office and for the first time of many in the coming film Gust exclaims angrily, and with a nod to his CIA spy training “I have no fucking idea who this guy is” and after Henry thanks the tradesman for his repair work on his window bitterly responds to Gust “You smash my glass and tell me to go fuck myself and I’m supposed to apologise?” A full blown argument is now in progress as Gust remains convinced that he’s the best man for the job of Station Chief in Helsinki and the job was his for the taking. “Promises were made!” he continues, before unleashing both barrels on his boss and “I’ve been with the company for 24 years! I was posted in Greece for 15! Papandreou wins that election if I don’t help the Junta take him prisoner! I’ve advised and armed the Hellenic Army! I’ve neutralized champions of Communism! I’ve spent the past 3 years learning Finnish which should come in handy here in Virginia! And I’m never ever sick at sea! So I wanna know why I’m not gonna be your Helsinki Station Chief”. Henry responds that he’s “coarse”, lacking in diplomatic skills and “I don’t know why the hell I didn’t fire you when you broke my fucking window!”.
Retorting with inappropriate sexual allegations, rumours, and with a nod to his spy training once more, Gust is seething at being overlooked for a job he’s been promised and primed for and, replying in kind, Henry makes a barbed comment about “loyalty” and of not trusting the defence of America to “people that are barely Americans in the first place”. Gust immediately replies “Yeah, well, I’d like to take a moment to review the several ways in which you’re a douchebag”. Shouting at Gust to leave his office before he fires him, Gust replies with a sarcastic “yes sir!” before asking the glazier to hang around for a second as he grabs a nearby hammer and smashes the pane of glass he’s just replaced! He storms back into his boss’ office for a final angry outburst and “My loyalty? For 24 years people have been trying to kill me. People who know how. Now, do you think that’s because my dad was a Greek soda pop maker? Or do you think it’s because I’m an American spy? Go fuck yourself, you fucking child!”.
Leaving Henry’s office and walking past a secretary he asks “How was I?”.
The secretary replies with a smile and a thumbs up. Gust thanks her, before departing from the office…
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon
I don't think Tom Hanks has ever had a movie taken away from him quite like Hoffman does here. The movie's got Hanks and Julia Roberts, and the nuclear blast of Philip Seymour Hoffman turns them into damned shadows.
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