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I have to admit that I'm a little biased, since Oliver Stone has always been one of my favorite writer/directors. But he has truly outdone himself by making a portrait of a man, still living, and showing both sides of the story successfully.
Since being a successful screenwriter is my dream, I must also give credit to the film's writer: Stanley Weiser, whoever you are. Additionally, Josh Brolin is so scary good at playing George W. Bush, that I sometimes thought they were one and the same.
One of the film's main points is that even though Dubya was born with a silver spoon in his hand, he was also born with an anvil on his back. Everyone since his great, great Grandfather had gone to Yale. His Father was a star on the baseball team, and Dubya was head cheerleader. The film shows the terrifying hazing by his Yale fraternity/brotherhood of richest and most powerful men in America, that he happily endured as part of his college career.
For the first half, the movie flashes back and forth between Dubya's presidency and his younger years. It shows him disappointing his Father again and again by failing or quitting the jobs found for him, and also the increasing severity of his alcoholism.
For the second-half, he quits drinking and "finds the Christian God", primarily to appease Laura and the rest of his family. He quits drinking completely at 40, and the movie poses the theory that perhaps the main reason he quit drinking is because of vanity. He was becoming too hungover to go on his 3 mile runs. Even the perfect physical genes of a Bush could not withstand the self-abuse.
Unfortunately, he seems to confuse being "reborn" with God speaking to him directly. Once he is the happy owner of a Texas major-league baseball team, he decides that God wants him in politics, no matter how much his Father does not (for the good of both of them).
He goes on to be a well-liked Texas governor and apparently in 1999 is seized by a Christian vision that tells him of a great test that the United States will face, and that he is meant to lead the nation. He ends up "winning" the Presidency in 2000 and will not listen to his Father's constant warnings about everything having to do with being leader of the free-world.
There is also the flashing back and forth between the secret meetings in the White House deciding whether or not he should invade Iraq. Since everyone on his cabinet except Colin Powell is a YES-man (or woman, Condoleeza, ahem), they tell him that he might as well invade Iraq because even if they do not have weapons of mass destruction yet, they must be building them.
In almost every scene of the film, one could either laugh or cry. Oliver Stone, Stanley Weiser, and Josh Brolin leave it up to you to decide if he is a bumbling idiot, a man whose family expectations got him in way over his head, or more likely: something in between. I have never been so emotionally torn by a film, but that is its main appeal for me. Enjoy.