Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

lordfinese Brzezinski admitted that the US started the war BEFORE the Soviets invaded and that it was a trap for them. The CIA/ISI was waiting for them even before they invaded. This movie portrays it as if some congressman came there in the 80s and he say suffering and then decided to act, with the usual fake made up grotesque stories of Russian barbarism to justify using Afghans as a pawn in a geo-political war. The same head chopping fanatics they used in Afghanistan are know in Syria, the US has a bad habit of exporting terrorism around the world with its shady Gulf/Turkish allies. Then you have the Stingers, which are useless missiles. The Russians lost less aircraft in Afghanistan than in training back in the USSR, although the Russian counter part, the Igla, has pretty much taken out the entire Ukrainian air force, in yet another country the US has unleashed war on with covert action. Also the lie that Afghanistan war is what ended Communism and the USSR, the KGB was training their high level agents in the 1970s for the fall of the USSR, it was all planned by Globalist forces, Gorbachev was appointed successor of Brezhnev if you can believe it, of course the top job went to a few elder politburo members like Andropov before Gorby got the job. The Central Banking elite planned not only the rise of communism but its fall, what they couldn't predict is a young Nationalistic officer of the KGB who played them at their game, and then turned the tables of those very elite, he is the President of Russia today, and knows the US's dirty wars in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Chechnya, Dagestan, Yugoslavia, China, Ukraine, Georgia, Latin America, and many other nations have killed millions, and in Syria he is drawing a line in the sand and saying enough is enough, and starting to kill the US's latest "freedom fighters", and that is ISIS. It is sick the amount of lies and jingoism spread to naive Americans through Hollywood, but alas, just look at who runs it financially. Today Communism lives on, but not in Russia. It lives on in the Trotskyist Neo-Bolshevik Neo-Cons who run US foreign policy. It lives on with the invasion of Europe with terrorist GLADIO B armies called migrants, despite the vast majority being military aged men, most of them not even fleeing from Syria, and the ones that are, many are fleeing from the brave Kurds or Syrian Army, the US has to protect its death squad army at all costs.

justbusinessthebook Oh, an interesting watch, entertaining, yes. But disturbing in its one-sided portrayal that what Charlie Wilson and the rich of America did to undermine 'Russian atrocities', committed from high-flying helicopters, was good. OR was their complete, dope complacency inside America during this period of time that, when the Yank did this using drones from on high after 2001, 'someone else!' had better not dare to play Wilson's game in the support of radicals, like ISIS?Oh, maybe the movie is 'honest' (? according to quick research I did, it is not exactly true to history) to only 'some details', but it is at least a must watch to spur the debate as to why, nearing a decade later, we allow lies from all sides to define what 'good democracy' is.... while the rich continue to play their self-serving, high-paying influence games... not really caring about what happened to cause the Russians to enter the destitute nation of Afghanistan in the first place... that part of the story is vainly glossed over.Where was 'peace advocate' Jane Fonda when all of this was going on? Exercising her love handles away for the sake of 'that rich guy' who eventually dumped her anyway?

nzpedals I am astonished that they went to the trouble of making this movie in spite of the revelations after the 9-11 tragedy. There is no acknowledgment that the funding of the Afghan rebels led directly to the formation of Al-Qaeda and all that followed. Maybe Wilson et al, are indirectly responsible for all that?So, I now wonder how these people, Wilson and Herring especially, can look themselves in the mirror or show their faces in public. Or maybe America would rather gloat over their "victory" over the Soviets?But there is merit in the writing, some great gags, some subtle twists, some quotable lines, the saddest being at the very end, where there is a tiny hint that maybe it might not really achieve what they all thought it was going to.

Tweekums Charlie Wilson isn't your stereotypical congressman; he likes to party and staffs his office entirely with attractive young woman; however he doesn't make promises he can't keep. One day, while in a Las Vegas Jacuzzi with a couple of strippers, he sees a news report from Afghanistan; seeing the people there standing up to the might of the Red Army he decides they need more support and on his return to Washington immediately doubles the funding for covert arms supplies to the Mujahideen to a still small ten million dollars. This act gets the attention of Joanne Herring; a very wealthy woman who is passionate about the cause; she wants even more and arranges for Charlie to go to Pakistan to talk to President Zia-ul-Haq who in turn sends him to see the conditions in the refugee camps on the border. Charlie is determined that the fighters must be given modern weapons and sets about meeting the people that can make this happen; this includes a brash CIA man by the name of Gust Avrakotos and an unlikely alliance of Israeli, Egyptian and Pakistani officials. If this wasn't enough he also has to deal with a possible inquiry into an allegation that he used cocaine.One might think a film about raising funds wouldn't be all that interesting but this is a lot of fun… as well as being surprisingly funny. This is largely down to Tom Hanks' performance as the larger than life Charlie Wilson and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the hilariously offensive Gust Avrakotos; not the sort of characters one would have associated with the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. It isn't all laughs though; we are told about the suffering of the Afghan people and without labouring the point there are dark hints that America hasn't heard the last of Afghanistan just because the Red Army was defeated and the Soviet Union collapsed. Overall this was a surprisingly entertaining film that I found well worth watching.