W.

The abbreviated title of Oliver Stone's newest flick lends itself to the inevitably questions: What is this? Who cares? But most of all, Why was this film made? And why was it made now, released so soon after George W. left the White House, before we could try to forget him? Couldn't we have waited for future revelations and hindsight? Shouldn't we have waited until his death so we could watch it reproduced in Hollywood splendor? But Mr. Stone apparently didn't bother with those kinds of questions as he set out to create this biographical drama, a collection of highly-selective moments in the still-going life of an extremely lucky, arrogant, and delusional man who happened to stumble into the presidency of the United States.

It seems that Stone also lacked the balls, so to speak, to give us a fully-biased vision of the devil, so the film fluctuates between wild speculation, cheap shots, and contrived sympathy. As usual with this breed of movie, there is an attempt to explain the subject's bravado, ambition, and idiocy, but it appears there was no decent explanation to be found, so instead Stone reduces all of Bush's famous mistakes and shortcomings to a father-son complex (George Sr. apparently preferred Jeb).

In his typical disregard for subtlety, Stone tries to say things with a few obvious, bloated instances of imagery (Bush and his cronies sweating like suited vampires in the Texas heat as the commander in chief leads them literally down the wrong path on his ranch), but nothing manages to express anything new or useful, and they even throw in the usual, tired jokes (a whole scene, for example, unconnected to anything else, reproducing the famous pretzel incident). A more compelling film would have focused on a specific aspect of Bush's presidency - perhaps the campaign of deceit that led America into two unending wars in the Middle-East.

BOOOOOOOO!
Rating 1.5 out of 5
Buy this film: W. (Widescreen)

Plot: 1
Imagery: 2
Originality: 1
Soundtrack: 1
Overall: 1.5