W.

Oliver Stone's "W" attempts to give us a cautionary tale of putting into the Oval Office a man with meandering ambitions and political pedigree who appears to be ill-equip to handle the demands of his 2-term presidency when challenges of 9/11 give rise to an inadvertent agenda against terrorism that would box him into a narrow field of initiatives (domestic and foreign).

Josh Brolin carries the film with ease as W from college-aged f-up to our 43rd President of today. I didn't think Brolin had this performance in him, but it's a very solid performance where he is simply W on the big screen, with no trappings of being Josh Brolin.

The complexities of the Iraq situation are focused on the players involved in W's response to 9/11, mainly Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, Rice, Rove and Powell. Stone constructs the tale to build up W's father's own struggles with Saddam in the early 1990's, which gives more impetus to focus on a response towards Iraq, rather than the more obvious route. Powell (Jeffrey Wright in a good performance) is the only one who comes out without much blame in W's response. Rove is very creepily played by Toby Jones because he comes across as the uncharismatic strategist riding W for all he's worth, as he does it while playing up to W's ego. Cheney (in a nice supporting performance by Richard Dreyfuss) is portrayed as the defender of oil prospects in the middle east which gives W the overlay and plan to kill 2 birds with one stone, but it would not work out that way. Rumsfeld (an ill-casted Scott Glenn) would end up alienating the inner cabinet with his own views of the situation. Rice (in a horrific performance by Thandie Newton) doesn't fare well at all as W's closer and facilitator.

Stone's take on W is of a man subconsciously (and consciously) wanting parental approval from a father whose life was filled with solid accomplishments and ideals, but W was never quite able to glean the proper tenor of such approval that was given to his brother Jeb. Whether that is somewhat the truth, it is Stone's underlying motivating force for W as he bounced from job to job in his post college years (many of which were set up by his father), and then falling into politics only after the brother deferred to help with the '88 campaign. We barely get a sniff of W's governor years, nor much of the 2000 campaign bruhaha. Stone is more concerned with how W handled the reins of the presidency, while glossing over the mile markers in the 1990s that would propel W to national prominence a scant 16 years after his father left office. It feels like Stone regards W's road to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to be accidental in nature, almost the perfect storm of political acsension, but with disasterous results of such of a rise to the highest office in the land.

It is true that Stone paints a very sympathetic portrait of W as a man without the necessary curiousity for the world, present and past, which would handicap his responses to crises in his 2 terms of the Presidency, leaving the US with the Iraq quagmire. All W wants to do is play a simple childhood game and get away from the demands of the world. He is done.

I give the film 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.