Does Oliver Stone’s ‘W’ go easy on Bush?

“Yet another curve ball is coming into play for the 2008 presidential election,” said Roger Friedman in Fox News online. In Oliver Stone’s new biopic, W, our current president is painted as a “tortured son with a domineering father, a gullible lightweight who becomes almost a pawn in the hands of more demonic players.” And Josh Brolin’s performance as the president makes George W. Bush “real, human, and suddenly very interesting.”

Hardly, said Travis Tindell in The Daily O’Collegian online. Once again, Oliver Stone is “trying to push his political agenda on audiences,” this time, by taking “cheap shots at the president.” It seems obvious that “Stone and his liberal cronies” are “trying to sway” the last of the undecided voters to their side.

W is “not fair (not a problem) and definitely not balanced,” said J. Hoberman in The Village Voice. But it “should prove mildly helpful to Democrats” during the “hurly-burly of the elections’ final weeks”—cable news outlets “won't be able to resist the movie's most outrageous scenes.”

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

But voters probably won’t be influenced by the movie, said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel online. “Stone plays things pretty much straight down the middle” this time, and “he's made a movie that will no more please the last Americans with ‘W’ stickers on their bumpers than it will amuse the ‘Why wasn't he impeached?’ crowd.”