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Josh Brolin Plays Bush Without Much Ridicule in ‘W’, But You Get the Picture
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Director Oliver Stone puts a unique stamp on his work, and is sometimes vilified for it, by the importance he places on shaping a movie based on his personal examination, comprehension and judgment of the people in history-making positions of power.
Vietnam, the assassination of JFK and the political downfall of Nixon are some of the more prominent people and issues he’s examined. President George W. Bush is the latest to inspire Stone’s original perspective.
“W” is no hatchet job. Surprisingly, Stone isn’t interested in making a case for trying the President for war crimes. He’s not interested in re-hashing the controversies of the 2000 and 2004 elections. He’s not interested in re-visiting Bush’s policy failures in areas like the environment or civil liberties.
What Stone is going for is something approaching a sensitive expose of a what he sees as a clueless loser who squandered the advantages and dishonored the legacies of a family that worked hard and honestly for its position of influential integrity in business and politics.
Stone brackets his portrait of the making of a hollow man, trying to fill the void with liquor, religion and association with men of dubious substance, with a re-creation of the deliberations by Bush and his advisors on the selling to the American people and the world the necessity of war with Iraq. Stone paints a dismal picture of a future leader who was incapable of defining himself other than in terms of someone who would never measure up to his father or prove himself based on the father’s tough standards.
“Junior” (Josh Brolin) disappoints “Poppy” (James Cromwell) at every stage of his moral and intellectual development. George senior may love his son, but it’s clear he doesn’t respect him. After bailing his college-age son out of jail, paying off a pregnant girlfriend, pulling strings to get W into Harvard business school and watching his son fail at most everything he puts his hand to, George senior is not subtle about expressing his disappointment.
As Junior plaintively puts it, “I’m having a devil of a time figuring it (what he’s cut out for) out.” Booze dulls the desperation and fuels the bravado to reach a little higher after each crash and burn.
Marriage to a stoically supportive Laura (Elizabeth Banks) and a religious conversion help dry Bush out. But then the bar gets raised significantly when Poppy becomes President (with a little help from Junior’s work on the Willie Horton campaign ad) and then wins the Gulf War (“Guess we kicked the Vietnam War syndrome”). The spotlight shifts from Poppy, with his failure to destroy Hussein and his re-election loss, to Junior, who gains the governorship of Texas; and then sees a divine hand at work in his decision to run for president.
With significant help from a man named Karl Rove (Toby Jones) Junior gains the White House, where tragedy, the machinations of ambitious advisors and righteous revenge seal the deal on a colossal blunder of leadership.
Brolin as Bush is just as uncanny a portrayal as Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin; though it never smacks of ridicule of the 43rd President. But, there is no escaping the fact that it sends a shiver of remorse down your spine that our nation could have elevated such a person to the presidency A Lionsgate release, rated PG-13.
