Bush-league: 'W.' a provocative, premature presidential drama
In one of its sillier sports metaphors, Oliver Stone's "W." casts George W. Bush as a star baseball player performing to the roaring approval of an invisible stadium crowd.
Early on, fans go nuts as Bush hears the crack of the bat, sees the ball coming and makes an incredible catch cementing his celebrity status.
At the end, "W." repeats the same scene. This time the adoring fans are silent. Bush appears confused and disoriented as he looks up in anxious anticipation of the catch.
He waits. And waits.
And waits.
These imaginary scenes suggest that not only did Bush miss the ball, America's 43rd president doesn't even know what happened to it.
Like that ball, Stone's "W." leaves us hanging with an open finale that acknowledges Bush's real story doesn't have a satisfactory movie ending. Not yet, anyway.
"W." marks the controversial Stone's third cinematic essay on U.S. presidents, following "JFK" (1991) and "Nixon" (1995). Given the filmmaker's rabid dislike for right-wing politicians, "W." comes off as a remarkably restrained look at the rise to power of a noted underachiever whose command of language makes Yogi Berra sound positively scholarly.
Two inspired performances stand out in "W." The always surprising Josh Brolin avoids a caricature of the real Bush, yet, he so perfectly captures that cowboy strut and nervous half-snort/half-chortle that he slowly evolves into a presidential dead ringer.
Richard Dreyfuss, perhaps channeling the conservative senator he played in "The American President," seems to be playing a cartoon of Vice President Dick Cheney - until we realize the real VP actually looks and reacts just like the reel one.
"W." begins as President Bush tries to pick the right words for a post-9/ll speech that will define America's enemies as the infamous "axis of evil." His advisers include Condi Rice (a spot-on Thandie Newton), Karl Rove (Toby Jones), Colin Powell (a tentative, miscast Jeffrey Wright), Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn) and George Tenet (Bruce McGill).
Stone, directing from a script by "Wall Street" writer Stanley Weiser, hopscotches back and forth between Bush's presidency and the events leading up to it: W.'s drinking problem, his party time at college, meeting his future leading lady Laura (Elizabeth Banks), being elected governor of Texas, becoming a born-again Christian and, later, plotting the invasion of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.
Stone's simplistic, Hollywood conclusion?
W. is just a good ol' Texas son constantly clamoring for approval from his buttoned-up dad, the first President Bush (James Cromwell, who doesn't resemble the elder George, but captures his disciplined essence). Junior apparently became president to prove he's as good as his favored brother Jeb and to show Dad he can finish the job that the senior Bush failed to do in Iraq the first time.
Stone resists the temptation to portray W. as a born-again doofus whose Christian-right ties propelled him into the White House. Wisely, Stone lets Dubya's own comical phrasings and tortured wordsmithing do the job.
"There's no way I'll ever be out-Texased or out-Christianed again!" Bush declares after losing his first race to a Texas Christian Democrat.
The surprisingly conventional "W." is amusing without being enthralling, provocative without deep insights. It is a bold first attempt, and a premature one, to define George W. Bush - both the man and his presidential legacy.
"W."
Rating: 2½ stars
Facts: Josh Brolin, Richard Dreyfuss, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Elizabeth Banks
Directed by: Oliver Stone
Other: A LionsGate Films release. Rated PG-13 (alcohol abuse, language, sexual references, war images) 131 minutes.