Director: Oliver Stone
Entertainment grade: C–
History grade: B
George Bush became US president following a highly controversial election in 2000.
The son of former president George Bush Sr, he described himself as "a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity", emerging from a misspent youth as an alcoholic draft-dodger to enjoy a misspent adulthood as the least popular president in American history.
Politics
It's 2002, and the Bush team is sitting around in the Oval Office, trying to come up with a neat phrase to describe "those Ayatollah cockamamies", as Bush calls them. "How about the axis of weasels?" says one. Meanwhile, Donald Rumsfeld is doodling a dreamy sketch of Condoleezza Rice. Most accounts suggest Rumsfeld consistently undermined Rice, even reducing her to tears on one occasion. The only evidence for any romantic tension in the Oval Office was the Freudian slip Rice made in 2004, when she referred to Bush as "my husband". While that's odd, it's pretty flimsy.
Casting
Josh Brolin is great in the title role, perfecting the permanently bewildered expression and smug chuckle. Even better is Richard Dreyfuss as arch-villain Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove (played by Toby Jones) could only be creepier if he actually was Karl Rove. Some of the other performances falter simply because Stone has cast them too young. Jeffrey Wright does a decent job, but at 43 cannot capture Colin Powell in his late 60s. Ioan Gruffudd is supposed to be Tony Blair, but comes off more like Prince William. Meanwhile, Thandie Newton tries to make up for being 20 years younger than Condoleezza Rice by croaking and stooping. She's nothing like the real Rice; she seems to be playing The Penguin.
Scandal
The story of the young Bush is told in flashbacks. He accidentally gets a woman pregnant, and a tight-lipped Bush Sr says that he will deal with it – the implication being that he will arrange for her to have an abortion. The internet will furnish you with many such rumours, but then the internet will also tell you that the Duke of Edinburgh is a giant shape-shifting lizard who ate Princess Diana. As far as history is concerned, this is extremely speculative territory. On the other hand, though the real Jeb Bush has dismissed it, the film's turbulent portrayal of Bush Jr's relationship with his father is supported by plenty of credible evidence. The scene in which a drunk Bush Jr challenges his dad to a fistfight appears in several authoritative biographies.
War
On Iraq, Powell gets to be the good guy, pulling expressions of increasing horror while Cheney lumbers around barking that they have to invade because that's where all America's oil is. Powell even asks what the exit strategy might be. "There's no exit," snarls Cheney. "We stay." It might sound like hyperbole, and certainly it is imaginative. But bearing in mind that several well-placed insiders, including Alan Greenspan, have said publicly that the war was motivated by oil, the scene is historically supportable.
Dialogue
Bush himself is an unstoppable source of gaffes, and the film relishes putting a selection of real-life Bushisms back into the fictional president's mouth. "Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?" Bush says to a reporter. And, in a White House meeting: "Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … [long pause] … you can't get fooled again." Admittedly, the president actually said that at a press conference in Tennessee; but alas, those were his words, in that order.
Verdict
Stone goes easy on George Bush, blaming many of his failings on Rumsfeld, Cheney and an ice-cold father. A historian might well quibble with that interpretation but, as far as the facts go, there's a reasonable degree of truthiness here. As the man himself said: "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
