89 out of 93 people found the following review helpful:
No gore, lots of dick and bush
BobbyShaftoe from ,
19th March, 2009
There was a physicist, whose name I have forgotten, who once said that 'religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil takes religion'. Whether this applies to Mr Bush or not I wouldn't like to judge, but I do like the quote. Actually, screw it, I love to judge, Bush is in the third category. Perhaps I am naive, but I believe there is far too much cynicism about politicians these days, and I am certain that almost all of them enter politics because they want to do good, and they make decisions based on what they think is right, and not because a sinister group of unelected corporate whatevers are forcing them to advance their secret plans to rule the world and blah blah. I think that Bush, for all his egregiousness, did what he believed was right. Unfortunately, what seems right to an ivy-league, trust-fund baby with daddy-issues, a sense of entitlement, a chip on his shoulder and an unshakeable belief in his own righteousness thanks to his born-again christianity, is where we run into problems with a leader of the free world. Bush believed that God was on his side, always. I read books about history, it's something of a hobby of mine, and I'm still waiting to come across an example of a leader who went for a bit of an old pray, then came back and said 'look lads, I'm sorry, I've had a chat with God, and unfortunately He's backing the other side on this one'. Bush was and is regarded as stupid. He isn't. He's ignorant. Perhaps wilfully so. This film portrays Bushie junior's life as shakesperian psycho drama about his macho-competitive relationship with his ever-disappointed father, whom he wanted to both impress and outshine. Well duhhh. What's Olly gonna do for his next trick, make a film about how Bill Clinton was a horndog who couldn't keep his 'V. P' in his pants? This film is like Stone's movie about 9/11: despite the highly emotive subject matter, it's curiously bland and flavourless. Why they felt the need to cast beautiful young people and then try to ugly them up, and make them middle-aged, is quite beyond my ken. Why not just cast actors who look the part to begin with? This is most obvious with the actress playing Laura Bush. It's about as convincing as Kate Moss sticking a biscuit on her face and trying to pass herself off as the Elephant Man. The only exception is Richard Dreyfuss, who plays everyone's favourite pantomime villian Dick Cheney with lip-smacking relish. There is one scant mention of the republican's stealing of the 2000 election (and that's barely a mention), which in pretty much any other country in the world, history would have recorded as a coup d'etat. As often with these hollywood biopics (Ali, Walk the Line etc), after viewing this flick I felt that my time would have been better spent watching a documentary about the real subject, who is undoubtedly more entertaining than the actor hired to play him.
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