Tom Hanks

Charlie Wilson’s War

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Charlie Wilson’s War
  • IMDb: link

“You can teach them to type, but you can’t teach them to grow tits.”

Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks), a junior Congressman from a small district in Texas, did the impossible.  Not only did he spearhead the largest covert war in United States history, but he kept it a secret for years.

Wilson, a member of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee and the only Congressman from a district “who doesn’t want anything,” was in an unique position to change the world while nobody was looking.

After learning about the Afghan resistance against the Soviets, and being cajoled into providing more assistance by a powerful political contributor (Julia Roberts), Wilson with the help of his friends and CIA operative Gust Avrakotots (Philip Seymour Hoffman), over the course of the decade began increasing the money, weapons, and training being put into Afghanistan and began fighting a covert war which only a scant few even knew was taking place.  And we aren’t talking a small increase here; we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.

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So Dark, the Con of Man

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Da Vinci Code
  • IMDb: link

The Da Vinci Code

Ron Howard probably wasn’t the best director for a vast conspiracy/thriller picture; off the top of my head Oliver Stone seems to be the more natural choice.  Neither was Akiva Goldsman (I, Robot, A Beautiful Mind) the right man to try and adapt Dan Brown’s novel to screen.  The final look of the film feels very much like a book stuffed into a movie.  The film really is a confusing jumble of odd choices and missed opportunities.

In case your one of twelve people who hasn’t read the novel the premise runs like this:  Scholar Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is on a book tour in Paris where he is summoned to the Louvre where a man (Jean_Pierre Marielle) who was scheduled to meet that afternoon has been murdered.  Captain Fache (Jean Reno) is certain Langdon is the killer while cryptographer (Audrey Tautou), who is also granddaughter of the murdered man, is certain he is innocent.  Neither one of their certainties is satisfactorily explained.

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