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A fictionalized account of Congressman Charlie Wilson's push to have the US support the Afghani fighters against the Soviet invasion. It was a great balance between comedy and drama, reminding me how disappointing it is that we all don't have script writers in real life. Ignoring all the witty lines, it also does a great job at showing how Congress really works, for both good and bad, as influence is peddled and favors are traded behind the scenes.

As for the clueless review that mentions "even if it does flunk the obvious link between the help that Herring and Wilson provide and the ultimate consequences (9/11)," it didn't ignore it at all. The end point about us spending billions to free Afghanistan but being unwilling to spend a million to rebuild the schools was a clear hat tip to that. It wasn't the war that led to 9/11, it was the usual ability of Congress to ignore long term impacts. If it had spent a small fraction on rebuilding Afghanistan that it did to free it, the Taliban would have never come to power.

I finally rented it. As the other commenter mentioned, it was received very well here in Israel. That just says how flat our industry is. Anything not terrible is great.

The movie was very predictable, had too many characters, and just didn't say anything new. The characters seemed taken out of a catalog of stereotypes.

I'll admit, I skipped about 30 minutes in the middle (gotta love DVDs!) just because it looked so predictable. Sure enough, as I continued the movie, everything seemed as expected.

It's not that it's bad, it's just that it's very average, and not deserving of the raves it received here.

I'll start with the minor nits. No flight attendant would survive being that annoying and intrusive on a flight. More importantly, no real southerner would equate Lincoln and Van Zant. He'd either have Lincoln much higher or much lower than Skynard, depending on the person's view on "The Late Unpleasantness." Finally, the child was a completely cliché movie child.

The movie was too slow for that empty a script and concept to keep my attention. As for the other review that said if your dad died, you'd ramble, my dad died when I was 28. Yes, I rambled, but the stuff the "hero" went through was just idiotic. However, not as idiotic and trite as the wedding subplot.

Even the great soundtrack couldn't give the movie enough emotion and life. It was a movie with a simple message, told without originality, that just couldn't survive the extremely long cut or the bland script. I enjoy so many of the actors, just not in this movie.