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When Oliver Stone, the unabashed liberal, decided to make this biography of George W. Bush many thought it might be a hatchet job. What we really received in the end is a cross between a satire and Stone’s Greek tragedy-like NIXON. Stone can’t help but work in many of the classic Bush-isms like “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” Stone certainly makes W. look like a fool at times, but he also makes him look like a man with strong convictions. Like Nixon’s paranoia, Stone argues that Bush’s anger toward criticism and lack of self-reflection combined with a deep desire to gain the approval of his father are the character flaws that have brought him down.

Bush Jr. (Josh Brolin, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) was a hard partier in his younger years, booze and women being his favorite pastimes. Like many of his jobs, it was his father (James Cromwell, BABE) who pulled strings to get his oldest son out of trouble time and time again. Following a disastrous speech during his first run for the Senate, Bush asks his wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN) her opinion of his performance. When she says it was bad, he drives the car into the garage door. After he loses, he vows never to be out Texan-ed or out Christian-ed again. When his dad runs for president, George Sr. asks for his son’s help where he shows his knack for dirty politics with the infamous Willie Horton ads. Political advisor Carl Rove (Toby Jones, THE MIST) tells him he could be a great politician, but he has to do something with his life. W. finally decides to clean up his act.

Now booze free and a born-again Christian, Bush becomes the owner of the Texas, Rangers. He is devastated when his father loses the presidency, saying his father is too old and didn’t go at Clinton hard enough. W. soon decides he’s going to run for governor of Texas, but his dad is worried that it will hurt his brother Jeb’s chances for the Florida governorship. W. won’t be denied by his younger more accomplished brother. With the help of Rove, W. wins. Then W. believes God wants him to run for president and the rest is history.

These scenes of Bush’s rise are cut together with what Stone argues is his greatest failure — the Iraq War. In an effort to focus on W.’s daddy issues, Stone doesn’t deal with the 2000 election, 9/11, 2004 election. Katrina, Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzalez, or the many other stains on his presidency. Stone paints W. as the “decider.” The man who tells his vice president Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss, JAWS) to back off in meetings, because he’s the president. Cheney just smiles and nods and goes about doing what he wants behind Bush’s back. W. admits he leads with his gut and likes it when reports are only three pages long. While Cheney, Rove, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn, THE RIGHT STUFF) and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton, CRASH) are either supporting their own war agenda or kissing W.’s butt, Secretary of State Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright, CASINO ROYALE) warns them that they should look at the issue not so black and white and that if you break Iraq you own it. In the end, Powell looks like the prophetic one, while W.’s underachieving has now ruined the Bush name.

Just looking at him Brolin doesn’t seem like a likely choice to play George W. Bush, but he delivers. He brings a simple charm to Bush that humanizes him more than the far left typically likes to demonize him. He is a privileged rich kid who has gotten everything handed to him, which is a fact he never accepts. The higher he rises the larger his ego grows. Brolin doesn’t play Bush like a caricature, but truly as a man who can’t see his own flaws. Dreyfuss, Jones and Wright don’t do imitations of their famous characters either, but capture the natures. The only weak link in the cast is Newton, whose impersonation of Rice is jarringly comical.

By crafting W.’s tale around a classic oedipal conflict, Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser leave many events out. Stone focuses on the Iraq War as the landmark event in Bush’s administration. He makes a good case for the personal reasons that led to how we got into Iraq. That said the film doesn’t capture the scope of his presidency. It does a good job of attempting to get into the mind of W., but doesn’t capture his effect on the world. Because the film is so focused, there seems to be something lacking, kind of like going to a concert and the band not performing your favorite of their greatest hits. Still W. feels long, mainly due to its nonlinear structure and its obsession with the details of the lead up to the Iraq War.

Nonetheless, W. is intriguing and makes us reflect on many aspects of what George W. Bush represents to all of us. In my review of Stone’s WORLD TRADE CENTER, I said that it was not the definitive 9/11 story, because it was too grand an event and will be retold from many points of view for decades to come much like World War II. W.’s presidency will be the same. Stone is just the first to take his crack and lets W. hang himself, using the President’s own words just in a new situation. The plot is based on facts that have come out in recent years in books and doesn’t dwell on the tabloid details like W.’s cocaine abuse and impregnation of a young woman. While the focus might be maddening at first, it does show Stone’s restraint. He aims higher than a highlight reel of Bush’s greatest blunders. In doing so he makes Bush more than the village idiot who got to be king, but a classic tragic figure, one whose hubris not only brings down himself, but his family and beloved country as well.