Charlie Wilson's War

6.5/10. Well-written and slickly put together with some nice comic set pieces. Nevertheless the film never managed to really get beyond this (did it even intend to?) to the larger, and more important, themes; be these the emptiness of Charlie Wilson’s hedonistic personal life (and the mirror it holds up to the US in the 80), the way in which politics get done (lobbying, horse-trading of votes, off-the-record committees), or the causes and (unintended) consequences of the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan (which despite the film’s pretension to more serious engagement is still so over-simplified as to border on caricature).