Jonathan Richards/IN THE DARK

W.

Directed by Oliver Stone

PG-13, 131 minutes

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DUBYA

In the first scene of Oliver Stone's meandering examination of the fall and rise, and fall, and fall, of our 43rd president, there is a line intended (accurately, I think) to sum up our American power structure over much of the last century or two. The scene is a fraternity hazing session at Yale. Naked pledges, the scion of the Bush family among them, are in a basement seated shivering on ice while liquor is forced down their throats. One of the upperclassmen smirks: "Honor, decency, and God-given character – that, along with our family fortunes, is why we rule the world."

        There is very little arguing with the second part of that sentiment. And it is difficult to imaging a man with George W. Bush's résumé rising from the ashes of his prodigal indiscretions to the political heights he has reached without family connections driving the bus. Back then, though, young George tells his fraternity brothers he has no ambition to follow in the family political footsteps. He's one of those boys who just wanna have fun.

        The young Dubya, not to put too fine a point on it, was a drunk and a wastrel. By many accounts, Stone has soft-pedaled some of the worst of it. There's plenty of excessive drinking on display here, but little or no drug use, a pursuit those who knew the future president in his salad days remember vividly. Business failures and his dodgy stint with the Texas Air National Guard are painted with a light brush, though there is a wry mention of his trading of Sammy Sosa when he was an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Stone jumps from ledge to ledge without always showing us enough of the important landscape in between.

        The young Dubya we see here has a good deal of natural charm, and Josh Brolin shines his full light on that quality. You can see why good-time girls and poker players and drinking buddies gravitated to him. You also understand how his family connections made him an attractive guy for Texas businessmen to pal around with.

        Stone keeps the time frame fluid, moving regularly between his subject's past and presidency. And one of the most successful aspects of the movie is the picture it gives of the decision-making process inside the Bush White House. We see a group of individuals, some smarter than others, with differing perspectives, ambitions, and agendas, sitting around making decisions that will drastically alter the fate of the world. Their information and their analysis are no better and probably no worse than you'd find at any dinner party where the wine ran to more than $12 a bottle.

        The President's inner circle is portrayed by actors for the most part perfectly chosen to reflect their real-life counterparts, and as the camera moves for the first time  around the cabinet room, you discover each principal with a shiver of recognition. Look, there's Cheney (Richard Dreyfus)! Hey, it's Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright)! Wow, that's Karl Rove (Toby Jones)! And so on right down the line. The only actor who disappoints physically is Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld. Glenn looks shriveled and gaunt, and can't project the former Secretary's bully wrestler's swagger.

        Central to Stone's celluloid psychoanalysis is the relationship between father and son. With his carousing and shiftlessness, Dubya is a major disappointment to his patrician father, and he hears about it. "What do you think you are," George H. W. (James Cromwell) demands caustically after another filial disgrace. "A Kennedy? You're a Bush!" It will come as no comfort to Barbara Bush's admirers to learn that Jeb, the good son, is a chip off the paternal block, while Dubya is said to have his mother's temperament.

        The movie is a disappointment for a number of reasons. It will not satisfy partisans who hope to dine on Bush's skewered flesh for a coupe of hours. This Bush may be shallow and egotistical, but he is no puppet. He can be manipulated, but he is the Decider. Stone fuzzes over some key moments in the Bush biography – the legendary ultimatum from Laura (Elizabeth Banks) to stop drinking, his epiphany and conversion to Born-Again Christianity. It works in a number of Bush's famous gaffes, the "misunderestimate me " and "Is our children learning" and "Fool me once" moments, like a compilation of Dubya's greatest hits for a late-night TV commercial, without making them part and parcel of the character.

        W. bites off a big chaw, and can't quite masticate it. We've seen too many documentaries, read too many exposés of this administration and its misdeeds, to be satisfied with this. Even so, a lot of what it does show us is fascinating. Brolin is remarkable, and a lot of the cast is just as good, particularly Dreyfuss's Cheney. But it's a movie that has you looking at your watch long before the final credits.    

         As Poppy Bush says, and says again,"You disappoint me, Junior."