W

[malkavia]

I also felt that Stone went over the top with Condi, but I thought everyone else was brilliantly portrayed. They deified Powell, but I do that in my head all of the time.

Best part of the movie:

Colin Powell expressing confusion about why Rove is hanging out in the shadows during a war meeting

I laughed for a solid minute, much to the chagrin of the rest of the theater. (Why so serious?)

[gigi]

@Agent_Foxtrot

All-in-all, W. does a surprisingly good job of making Bush a sympathetic and likable man. I had to slap myself upside the head and remember [BBQPit]the hell he’s made our country the past 8 years.[/BBQPit] I just can’t buy that he has always tried to do the right thing all along.

Exactly. I guess I am one of the liberals who had wished it would have been more of a hatchet job. I was left wondering if he really believes all this stuff about freedom and democracy, which can then coincide with his handlers’ schemes for oil?

I was left pissed that I was asked to try and understand this guy, and my own daddy issues didn’t help!

[bienville]

@The_Second_Stone

I saw it, and I give all the actors props, as most of them were doing impressions of the real people. James Cromwell as Senior was not doing an impression and Senior came off smelling like a rose.

It’s a challenge when portraying figures from recent history, figures for whom there is a great deal of video footage available with which the audience is very well familiar. The audience is familiar with the real person’s mannerisms and speech patterns/voice/accent.

The director and actor want an accurate likeness but don’t want an impression of the person to get in the way of the acting. The more vibrant the real life personality, the more distinct the real person’s mannerisms and speech patterns, the more difficult it is to be accurate without going over the top.

I thought Brolin was hit and miss. There were some points where I was totally absorbed in this story’s character George W. Bush that I only saw the character- rather than seeing an actor playing a part. There were other times that I was taken out of the story because Brolin came off as an actor “doing” George W. Bush.

I thought Scott Glenn as Rumsfeld, Jeffrey Wright as Powell, and Toby Jones as Rove turned in the best performances in that with them I was always seeing the characters in the story not the actors playing their parts. Dreyfuss as Cheney comes in a very strong 4th place.

Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice exemplified the extreme of losing the acting to the impression. I saw it in a packed theater and everyone laughed whenever she was on screen. Too much emphasis was put on the voice, mannerisms, and speech patterns- such that she came off like she was meant to be in an SNL skit.

Cromwell, who I’m generally impressed with, represented the opposite extreme. We’ve all seen hours and hours of George H W Bush speaking and interacting with others. We know this guy very well- and Cromwell didn’t put that guy on the screen. The character created by Cromwell- I can not imagine this guy saying “Read my lips: No new taxes.” I can not imagine Reagan shouting for this guys microphone to be turned off. I think Cromwell should at least done a little bit of voice work. The danger would have been to stray into Dana Carvey territory, but something needed to be done to convince me that the guy I was watching on the screen could pass for the guy I know in real life.