At the AMC Bay Street 16 with Lucía, Aman, Ruchi, Menica, and Vikram, on 5 January 2008, at 22:35.
I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It was a rare case where the ending of the film changed the way I thought about the film in a significant way. The entire film is shown essentially from Charlie Wilson’s perspective, and we come to understand why he does the things he does and why they seem reasonable. At the very end of the film, however, the focus shifts from the covert war in Afghanistan to the consequences of that war that unfold after the film ends and into the present day. The entire film is an elegant illustration of how it is that we can find ourselves in a position of helping to set the stage for Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There’s a powerful statement that whatever we may accomplish in the domain of world politics and conflict, nothing is done and finished—everything we accomplish is the starting point for what comes next, and nowhere is this more true than our covert war with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. None of this is explicitly mentioned, but it is very clearly evoked in the last five minutes of the film.
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