W - the film

Living in France films come out at different times. While I was in Lorraine I saw the posters advertising the imminent release (I had to look the word up!) if Oliver Stone's film 'W'. At once I knew that I had to see it. I am not American, neither am I French, and I really don't know that much about George W. I had heard that the film was critical and wanted to see for myself. I think the film is reasonably true, I know that there were things said in the film, blunders etc, which I have seen George W say, so in that way it was true to life.

The beginning of the film appalled me. As a student in the UK I had to undergo some sort of initiation when I went to university and I am adverse to this 'chumy, all boy bravado thing'. So at the outset I was not enthralled by the man however I really think that the film does not denigrate George W, but shows the audience how he has been manipulated by a band of coniving people. At the end of the film, and I am certainly not at all politically Republican in any way, I felt some sympathy for the character. OK, he is President and must take responsibility for the actions of the US government, however, with perhaps the exception of Colin Powell, the rest of them are like vultures, vampires, rats the lowest of the low. And Condoleezza Rice, she is the worst of them all, the silk hand in a boxing glove! I enjoyed the film and was surprised.