Charlie Wilson's War (2007) on Netflix
R20071h 42mBiographyComedyDrama
In 1980, Texas congressman Charlie Wilson takes up the Afghan mujahideen's fight against the Soviet occupation. Joanne Herring pushes him, and CIA operative Gust Avrakotos is sent to him.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.0/10132,372 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes82%
Trailer
Plot summary
Charlie Wilson represents an East Texas district in Congress, where he spends more time on parties and on trading votes than on legislating, and he staffs his office with young women. In 1980 he watches network news reports about the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and hears about it from Joanne Herring, a Houston socialite, political activist and television host who wants Washington to do more for the Afghan people. Charlie finds that the United States has no official policy on Afghanistan and that support for the mujahideen is small, while the CIA's interest stays unofficial. He asks to meet a senior CIA official and gets Gust Avrakotos, an operative who works the Afghan file. Joanne presses him to visit Pakistan's leadership, which complains that American backing is too thin.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
According to a Los Angeles filmmaker with inside knowledge of the production, the film's upbeat ending exists because Tom Hanks was uncomfortable with an earlier draft of the script that closed on a scene of the September 11 attacks.- Unlike the film's depiction, Wilson and other Reagan-era officials were actually only 'lukewarm' at first about arming the Afghan mujahideen with Stinger missiles, and the missiles were not supplied until 1987, several years later than the movie suggests.
- The film was never released in Russian theaters after Universal's Russian distributor bought the rights; some suspected it was because of the movie's unflattering portrait of the Soviets, though the distributor said it simply would not turn a profit.
- Canadian journalist Arthur Kent sued the filmmakers in 2008, claiming they used his own 1980s news reporting footage without permission, and settled with the producers and distributors that same year on confidential terms.
- George Crile III, the journalist whose book the film is based on, later wrote that the mujahideen's victory left Afghanistan so destroyed and abandoned by the U.S. that it created the power vacuum the Taliban and Osama bin Laden filled.
