W. [Blu-ray]

This film was interesting about the former president. Gave insight to this man's past behavior and how he changed himself.

This film is a mixture of political commentary and character analysis, making it far more interesting that I expected. However, as character study and as political commentary it only goes so deep before turning back, as if the Oliver Stone doesn't totally trust the viewing public with all the details. The film actually paints a sympathetic picture of President George W Bush. This is due to the tension depicted between the cool Episcopalian statesman George Bush and his born-again evangelical son, George W Bush. In some regards, George W Bush follows the policies and ideology of Ronald Reagan rather then the realist approach of his father. The issue of the President's alcoholism was handled very well as we see the President move beyond his alcoholism through his religious faith and the support of his pastor, played by Stacey Keach. There were four events that are missing from the film that are highly significant and I certainly would have been willing to watch 1 more hour of film to see how Stone would interpret the events around the Gore vs. Bush 2000 election struggles in Florida, the response to September 11th, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and the Joe Wilson - Valerie Plame incident that revealed so much about the power of the Vice President in framing the war effort with Iraq. However since the film is not really meant to be comprehensive history, and only comments on policy indirectly, it is the character of George W Bush that is the true subject of the film.Josh Brolin is excellent as George W Bush as is Richard Dreyfuss in the role of Vice President Dick Cheney. George and Barbara Bush are played by James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn. They do an excellent job of creating the family of origin tensions that drive much of George W Bush's motivations and actions, at least in this interpretation. Elizabeth Banks plays Laura Bush, the most likeable character in the film. Her support for her husband and faith that he will eventually muddle through appears to be one of his greatest assets. I wish the role of Dick Cheney had been larger since we now know the pivotal role in played in the decision to invade Iraq and the growing distance between the President and Vice President during the last 18 months of his second term when President Bush distanced himself from Cheney, the architect of many of the failures of the Bush Presidency. Jeffrey Wright plays the reflective far-seeing Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who must constantly defend his position against Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. Toby Jones plays Karl Rove and is not given as much emphasis as I would have expected. As far as I can tell, Karen Hughes was completely left out of the film. I was not as impressed with the performance of Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice. She seemed stiff and insignificant.The film does a very good job of revealing how the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction destroyed the credibility of the Bush presidency. At some point George W Bush recognizes that he will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidential failures for taking the United States into a war on false fabricated evidence. The film had to show that President George W Bush was a man who rarely reflected upon his own performance as evidenced by the press conference where he is asked if he made any mistakes in his Presidency, and he responds that he can't think of one. In a presidency that was full of mistakes, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of the film and of the character of George W Bush.

My wife asked for a copy of this... and she loves it!

I thought the movie would be more interesting and speaking of someone who loves history. I just thought the movie would be better and would hold my interest, but it didn’t. That’s why I said it was just okay.

its likely going to make anyone who voted for him a little defensive, but the movie gives real insight to the life and especially the cabinet of george w bush as well as the relationship with his father it likely presents an accurate portrayal of certain parts of his life and presidency, but also goes out of the way -unnecessarily- at times to paint GW in a negative light. the film had decent acting, but much of the dialogue and sound track was geared to really make Bush look inept and unqualified, which he very well may have been. I would recommend watching as many people struggled to historically understand the reason we went to war with Iraq after 911, and it paints a very accurate image of the rationale and spin that was used to try to accomplish the bush administration goals.

To begin with, I confess that Mr. Stone's other contemporary Presidential biopic, "Nixon," has held my attention and admiration as my third favorite film, ever since I first saw it many years ago. So, it was inevitable that I could be disappointed by this new work, especially without the cinematographer Robert Richardson attached--and yet, I knew better. Here, the subject is G.W., who entered our lives well after the onslaught of epidemic political cynicism and 24-hour news cycles cranked out by media conglomerates. It is in fact Nixon who, Stone argued, marked the beginning of this terrible loss of innocence, making him truly the last great archetype of Greek-tragedy proportions (an aspiration that truly defines Mr. Stone's estimable oeuvre). Adding to that, our sitting President is not an especially nuanced or complicated human being--yet, human nonetheless, and what occurs to me is that any sincere attempt to plumb W.'s humanity could only make him so much more human than the truly villainous figure to whom we attribute countless loss of life and arrogant mismanagement of our centralized government.That is, to be true, what happens in the film "W." And again, if Oliver Stone is accused of obsessing over Greek mythology, here we can see new pangs reminiscent of Arthur Miller with his skill of dissecting the American family. It is widely reported, and all-too-simplistic, that the underlying conflict of this film is Oedipal, as between George H.W. and George W. But what I believe the viewer leaves with, after watching this film, is not any profound intrigue about that relationship between father and son, but rather the inevitable "Cabinet family" that creeps onto the prodigal son as he plods into his proof that he is stronger than his father, more deserving of his father's love, more deserving than Jeb, and "born again." Indeed, one important discipline I've always practiced during the end credits of a film I care about is eavesdropping, and tonight I heard several iterations of a startling conclusion: Namely, that the message of the film is that G.W. was the victim of a political machine, one that coerced the war in Iraq and numerous other perils that we face today.Surely this film is a political Rorschach Test, where one political persuasion and the other interprets the film to match their sympathies. But starting from the total wipeout that is G.W.'s disapproval ratings in the year 2008, what I find fascinating is that any competent portrayal of this man's humanity could only endear us closer to him, whatever our persuasions.There is a central scene in the film, in some kind of war room that I imagine to be under the Ellipse of the White House grounds, wherein the "war trust" lay out their case for invading Iraq without international consensus. (To my taste, Colin Powell is depicted with far too much vigilante heroism here, and I say this as someone who worked for his son Michael and always reserved great admiration for his father the elder General.) In this scene, Mr. Stone almost seems resolved to authenticate the very thing that stumped Sarah Palin--the "Bush doctrine" which is better punctuated as the "Bush" doctrine--giving Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove and Rice a suspension of disbelief that is not merely literary, but literally tactical. With geopolitical diagrams to boot, the audience is drawn closer to a realization that "reasonable" minds could buy the "Bush" doctrine, the as-played invasion named Freedom. Without going into too much detail, the scene basically depicts a not-so-scandalous point of view (quite historically ordinary) that America is losing her world domination, yet it would be nice to preserve it by military means.