BOTTOM LINE: “W.” is Oliver Stone without teeth. There are no left-wing jibes at one of the most controversial US Presidents in history, nor is there much fair or three-dimensional exploration in to the character of George W. Bush. Instead, we are left with a film that could have been ninety minutes long instead of two+ hours and still covered the same ground.

THE GOOD: A film about the President you can have a beer with seemed like a tantalising proposition when it was first floated, particularly with Oliver Stone at the helm. As embodied by a brilliantly cast Josh Brolin who nails the character well, George W. Bush in “W.” is a man who is not of bad intent; he is just prone to fail due to his low EQ rather than IQ. The man Oliver Stone chooses to show in this film is hard done by his father who feels his brother Jeb is the winner in the family. George, seeking some sort of spiritual redemption not only in the eyes of his father but in God, motivates himself to become successfully elected first as Governor and then as President, but manages to fail miserably at both due to his short temper, narrow and simplistic views of the world and a motivation to “appear” a success. Stone does his best work in portraying what we do know about the real man, being his bad boy early days, the Bushisms, his devotion to religion and his belief in being chosen by God to lead the world. If anything, this film makes you feel sorry for Bush in that he appears to be a simple character who was born in to a sophisticated world and who has just enough talent to get himself in to positions of power and privilege but manages to screw it up because he does not have the street-wise smarts inherent in his DNA to do the right thing. His rationale for invading Iraq was more about establishing a new American order in the Middle East so “no one will screw with us again” as opposed to finding those directly responsible for the crisis which unfortunately antagonised the American position in the region further. The best scene in the film is one in which Bush is having a dream in which his father is telling him in the oval office that even after all he has accomplished he has managed to become an even bigger failure, not only as a President but by tarnishing the Bush name and its 200 year history. The last shot of the film perhaps sums up Bush perfectly by Stone, in that he’s in the outfield of an empty baseball field, he moves to catch the ball but loses sight of it in all the lights shining down from him in the stadium, thus dropping the ball literally. “W.” is a lightweight portrayal, which may be appropriate given who it is about.

THE BAD: Given Oliver Stone’s previous work, “W.” is a fairly soft portrayal of such a controversial figure. You’d expect a characterisation of George W. Bush to be lightweight because the man has about as much depth as a kiddie pool, but Stone has made the entire film this way which makes it a little disappointing to any one, myself included, who wanted something meatier and sinister, with more top secret president meetings and more insight in to how Bush came to make the decisions he did. In this respect, the film occupies a half-way middle ground which cannot really satisfy anyone; the liberals will think it isn’t harsh enough and conservatives will think it’s not a fair representation of a man who comes from such a prestigious family. As a result, the film could have been thirty minutes shorter and still given you the same impression of the man that Stone wishes to impart.