Didactic poli-sci lesson on How the System Works, entertainingly illustrated by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols. The titular war is the one between the Soviets and the Afghans in the Reagan era, and Charlie Wilson is a nonfictional Texas congressman (played with supreme complacency by Tom Hanks) who, ideally situated for budgeting purposes, spared some time from his enjoyment of the perks of power (single malt, cocaine, strippers in the hot tub) in order to do the bidding of a rabid Right-wing fundraiser in his home state (Julia Roberts, fully surrendering to her natural or enhanced grotesquerie, at one point intrepidly separating her gluey eyelashes with an open safety pin) and broker a covert alliance between the Pakistanis and the Israelis, combatting the Evil Empire from discreetly behind the scenes. This is not your typical tale of the cavalier cynic getting involved, finding religion, committing himself to a cause. The protagonist's profligate ways are typical enough, and the refugee camp that opens his eyes is depicted very straight, but there remains, even after that, a sense of irony about his crusade -- no more solemnity in his demeanor than in that, let's say, of the surgeons in MASH -- so that his commitment is forever perceived as something of a pose, something within quotation marks. The job gets done all the same. Philip Seymour Hoffman, sporting a lush mustache and full head of dark hair in testimony to the character's Mediterranean ethnicity, goes Hanks one better (several better, in fact) as a disgruntled CIA spook who, irked at not getting the Finland assignment after studying Finnish, cannot even throw a tantrum without a wink. Not only does Hoffman walk away with the show, he also gets to recite the Buddhist parable whose punchline frames the entire picture, turning an ostensibly happy ending into an up-in-the-air ending, or in other words no ending at all. We know too well what happened next. With Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Ned Beatty. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd