Some of my favorites show up in small roles, including both of my current Hollywood girlfriends, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. Adams especially is great, and she does in a small part what she did with her star turn in “Enchanted” – pull focus in every single scene in which she appears. The woman is a camera magnet! I was happy to see some TV buddies of mine including Homicide’s Ned Beatty and Peter Gerety, Jon Slattery of Mad Men, and Rachel Nichols from Alias. A little dose of Slattery makes everything better.Ultimately, despite some zippy dialogue and a nice story flow, it doesn’t all hold together. Maybe it’s just the nerd in me, but I wanted more detail. Was it really that easy to increase the budget for Afghani rebels from five million dollars to 250 million? It certainly looked easy, but I can’t believe the only roadblock along the way was right at the very beginning. They zipped through a lot of history there. And I’m not entirely convinced that the ability to shoot down Soviet helicopters won the war. If anything, the freedom fighters get short shrift. They’re basically tripods for America’s rocket launchers. I realize this is Charlie’s story, but presenting victory in Afghanistan as a personal victory for one Congressman is an irritating shortcut. And they all but ignore the fact that the money and weapons largely ended up in the service of Al-Qaeda. Sure, that’s an uncomfortable fact to include in a character piece, but it’s a pretty grave omission.
