by Holly Huffstutler

Created on: April 29, 2009   Last Updated: May 01, 2009

Oliver Stone's "W" is nowhere near as hostile as one might expect from an in-depth biopic of our much-hated and much-beloved 43rd president. Nor does it approve of him. Rather it presents the image of a man who searched for a role in life and a way to please his father and made several progressions and mistakes along the way.

A few jokes are made at Bush's (Josh Brolin) expense, but most of them are transcripts of verbal missteps he actually made. Several bushisms are used and the film ending press conference is reproduced word for word. Bush's faux cowboy persona is amplified by the soundtrack with repeated plays of "Yellow Rose of Texas" and the theme from "Robin Hood."

The life of President George W. Bush is chronicled from his Yale fraternity days up to when his approval rating fell after Iraq started to disintegrate. Along the way the audience sees him drift from job to job, meet and marry Laura (Elizabeth Banks), lose a congressional race and win a gubernatorial one, ascend from alcoholic to "born again" recovering alcoholic, and struggle with the expectations of his father, George Bush Sr. (James Cromwell)

The father-son relationships drives a great deal of this film. Bush lives with the knowledge that he is considered second place in his father's eyes to his brother Jeb and that his embarrassing mistakes disappoint his very aloof father.

Its amazing how many well respected character actors Stone has managed to stick in one great cast. With such well known and often examined characters like these, the acting pitfall would be to do a simple impression. In W, the cast's skill's range from one to the other. Any halfway decent comic can do a W impression, but Josh Brolin takes the audience inside his head and projects his overall personality without imitating him, portraying him by turns as brimming with baseless confidence and profoundly discontentment.

James Cromwell, while a wonderful actor and one whom Hollywood casting directors seem to see as "presidential," is miscast as George H.W. Bush. It didn't help that he was given perhaps the most heavy handed line in the film "Who do you think you are, a Kennedy? You're a Bushact like it"

Thandie Newton's sycophantic Condeleeza Rice amounts to not much more than a sour-faced impression and Ioan Gruffuyd seems to be wasted in his five minute cameo as British Prime Minister and reluctant Bush ally Tony Blair.

Besides Brolin's success with the title character, the real acting meat of the film belonged to the frequent confrontations between Richard Dreyfuss's Dick Cheney and Jeffrey Wright's Colin Powell.

The best of many great scenes between these two takes place in a discussion between all the players in the Bush White House over the internal justification for invading Iraq. In this scene Dreyfuss's slippery, intimidating Cheney hammers out the ties between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, saying to Powell "There is no doubt that there is a link." Wright's characterization of Powell rest's on his certainty of the negative logistical and moral ramifications of this turn in the "war on terror" He challenges Cheney with: "No doubt, Dick? No doubt at all?"

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