W.

Aroview: Oliver Stone examines the leadership of former U.S. President George W. Bush in this wayward, if strangely compelling account of the Texan’s contentious White House tenure.

Centred on Dubbya’s Iraq war controversy with flashbacks to his college years, early political foray and unlikely Presidential bid, dir. Stone jumbles conventional biopic tropes and over-familiar recent history, drawn in his usual heavy-handed style. Not the even-handed account that it could have been, Brolin’s measured performance as the oft-ridiculed Bush lends much-needed seriousness to a film that, elsewhere, includes caricatures of Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell – most of which embarrasingly verge on a Saturday Night Live sketch.

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