Duba-U

****
Oliver Stone’s light satire, feeling mercifully less agenda-than-entertainment driven, soaks the screen with a 131 minute psychology profile of a character who might just as easily have been a store manager at Walmart as President of the most powerful country in the world. In the current atmosphere, W. could have been a hatchet job or a total tragedy. It’s neither. It is a well researched, nearly evenhanded if hastily put together- shot in May for November release- silhouette of the Bush Jr. Presidency.

I’m not a fan of Stone films, often finding the Director’s objectivity filled less with fact than personal ideology corrupted most often by his politics. But this brazen attempt to display the trials of a sitting President- the first ever of its kind- attracted me right off. I’ve been strangely drawn to the commercials of the film and I think it’s simply because, like everyone else, I’ve wondered just how an administration could get so far off track so fast.

Using flashbacks, dream sequences and bits of newsreel, the film jiggits its way unapologetically and a bit too jarring through George’s life. With glimpses of the party-boy, failed business and political ventures, and the worst of his alcoholism we get a view of a man who matures into his failures until touched by the hand of God and led to the promised land of the Presidency. All of this is backlit by the meat of the story, life in the administration after 911 and during the early days of planning the invasion of Iraq. Here we begin to see just how W. might have been led to war as easily as he was led to the Presidency; a delusion of purpose, driven by the desire to please.

This truly could be the story of a man whose highest goal is to prove to his father his worth by becoming the manager of a Walmart. W. is a father and son story lacking substantial depth and too often veneered by odd cuts of George’s dream job as owner of a baseball team. But, W. has one great plus . . . a wonderful cast that resembles the White House ensemble both physically and in temperament. From Richard Dreyfuss as the cunning Dick Cheney to Thandie Newton as the nearly boot-licking Condi Rice, the over-the-top cast revolves around James Brolin in his first leading role almost as if he were the real deal.

W. is a good pick for a matinee or an evening’s DVD choice if you’re a center-of-the-road moderate. If you want to see him strung up, there’s not enough rope here, and if you want to see him deified you’re going to have to wait until after the Rapture hits Hollywood.