Grade: B | Genre: Drama Summary: Oliver Stone nicely captures W's aching journey for his father's approval and his cocky attitude of living by his gut while God steered the way. When I first heard the rumor circulating that Oliver Stone would be doing a biopic on George W. Bush, I got a queezy feeling in my stomach. I had flashes of Michael Moore branching out to direct dramatic pictures, and Stone's slanted objectivity undercutting what could have been a potentially fascinating character study. I've got to say W. proved that my fears were unfounded. Now there is plenty here for the conservative, Christian right to flap about, but the essential focus here is the portrayal of Bush. At the close of the film, its fair, and while none of us can camp out in his brain for a day to see how all the creaky gears come to the decisions he does, I believe this rendition isn't too far off the target. Before watching the film, I also feared that we were still too close to the subject matter. Would we really be able to see Bush objectively, being that he was still in office as this film debuted in theaters? Thankfully, yes. Stone essentially highlights his focuses around the war in Iraq. There no mention of financial meltdown and the lame duck years that history will fuse into his legacy. This snapshot is just enough to give us an intriguing look at the life that is George W. Bush.

We open on the cabinet in the early days when approval ratings were at dizzyingly high, and Bush (Josh Brolin) was the king of the world in the Titanic sense. These Washington elite were sitting around spitballing terminology for their enemy regimes until they stumbled upon the Axis of Evil. It all unfolds. The interactions, the dissension (well dissentor Colin Powell played by Jeffrey Wright), the puppet master lurking in the shadows. If you thought a team of monkeys were working round the clock to run our country, it turns out you weren't far off. No sooner do we setup camp in this scene in 2002 than we are whisked away to W's college days at Yale, pledging a fraternity and showing his prowess for liquor while being one of the boys. The movie moves in this continually motion of subplots pulled from the past in an attempt to shin a light on the decisions that form the present.

Back in the present, Bush plugs through planning the Iraq war. It starts with Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) planting the seed of Iraq's WMDs over lunch one afternoon and spirals into this full-fledged quest to avenge his father's defeat and to seal his second term of destiny. W always boasts that the buck stops with him, but we see throughout that he is extremely malleable. The clever minds of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney know just how to serve up their argument so by the end of the conversation Bush has digested the ideology as his own.

This film seems to echo many of my own feelings about the enigma of Bush in that he was largely a pawn for other people's more sinister agendas. Rove executed his political ship like a deft master and Cheney looked to reestablish the waning US power on the international stage through locking up the world's precious oil supply in the Middle East with the promise of democracy. It would be easy to call W a stupid man. A lot of his policy decisions definitely would support that theory. Rather, he was a man out of his league and one easily influenced by others. As a commissioner of baseball or owner of the Texas Rangers, I believe he would have seen great success by nurturing his first love. By following his father's calling and surrounding himself with corrupt men, he had little choice but to evolve into the president that he eventually became. Oliver Stone nicely captures W's aching journey for his father's approval and his cocky attitude of living by his gut while God steered the way. It was a solid perspective on a flawed president with great performances by Josh Brolin and James Cromwell.

Release Date: October 17, 2008