[Blu-ray]: W. – DVD: W.
W.
Is Oliver Stone losing his touch?
W. is the falsest, least authentic political film I’ve seen in a while. It’s full of bad dialogue that explains and explains for the ten year olds in the audience.
It neglects who these people are, Poppy, Rummy, Cheney, Wolfie, and what they set out to do from day one. This gang has rap sheets a mile long. They did not fall into these situations out of the blue.
W. presents us with the 9/11 as opportunity meme, as if American Empire is something new, something created out of whole cloth as a result of these people’s good intentions fighting “evil.”
What utter nonsense. Stone must know better, given his career and experiences, no? How does one drift so far from reality?
Who can blame Oliver Stone for playing on the audience’s ignorance? It’s not like the public keeps score on the gangsterism.
I blame him. I expected more, a lot more. And not more of Bush’s endless alcohol bingeing.
Bush Family Fortunes – The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2004)
Watch Online for Free
In the documentary Bush Family Fortunes (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) we get a more honest portrait of George W. Greg Palast did the legwork that Oliver Stone somehow overlooked when he presented us with a totally fictional W.
As for the real Bush, his record-breaking death row killing spree went unmentioned. This would conflict with the innocent knave version we get in the film.
What Bush actually did during the 9/11 attacks also wasn’t worthy of the sympathetic Bush we are to buy. Here’s the so-called Commander in Chief ignoring the notification that America is under attack (5 mins. in):
Some have claimed gross incompetence as W’s best defense for doing nothing in the middle of the only actual attack on the U.S. since?
Others have shown evidence that W.was stalling for time.
The real W. also shrugged off a warning (“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”), read to him by a CIA officer a month prior to the attack with the quip, “All right… You’ve covered your ass, now.”
Bush’s crimes and his unelected gang’s assault on the Constitution got little airing in the film. That would compromise his role as a semi-sympathetic protagonist. Wouldn’t an anti-hero be more appropriate in this case? Why were punches pulled, emotions played on and inconvenient facts excised on behalf of one of the most hated men of the modern age? A man who did more damage to the rule of law — globally and at home — than any American you can name.
W. fails time and again even when it uses real quotes from the regime. The dialogue quotes are always placed in different contexts. The timing is wrong. The intended listeners are wrong. Stone has crafted a false reality where Bush and the rest talk to each other the way they do to the press when the microphones are on. These veteran political operatives are suddenly ignorant of their own lifetime’s imperial crimes and crusades. These movie characters pretend all of this is new, and that they are the victims here.
Yes, they adopt a victimized mentality, and we’re to accept this despite the reality we’ve all just lived through.
A few scenes rise to the level of an Oliver Stone film. Very few.
The opening scene sets the movie off on completely the wrong foot. It contains every false note I’ve mentioned so far. It is completely wrong, completely naive, filled with ridiculous exposition. I would expect to see such a conversation in an amateur production, not here. It just goes splat.
Stone’s W. gave us one blurb concerning the body count of American soldiers at the time. What about the other million plus Iraqis, Oliver?
Stone takes Bush’s various myths at face value, and he renders a cheesy cartoon from them. Why?
Missed opportunity does not begin to describe what’s happened here. Perhaps the next generation’s Oliver Stone will revisit the W. legend some day and set the record straight.
(This film has literally made me want to reconsider my harsh review of Che, which was worlds above this mediocre attempt and much more politically savvy all around).
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