Charlie Wilson's War

Oscar Nominee – Best Supporting Actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman)

POOPER: (Thanks Brian!)
Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is able to get Congress to spend $500 million dollars on funding Afghanistan in the fight against the Russians after the initial proposal of $5 million.

At the end of the movie Charlie Wilson is honored for his work towards ending the cold war and Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) gets married to someone else.
Longer version:
After his experiences visiting the Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan, along with Bonnie (Amy Adams), and witnessing first-hand their ordeal, suffering and determination to somehow fight the Soviets, Charlie returns home and decides to embark in an effort to increase support and fundings for the “Mujahideen” -the Afghan rebel guerrillas fighting the Soviet invaders-. To this effect, he joins forces with rogue, no-nonsense CIA agent Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who, in turn, puts him in touch with his small, but very strategy-savvy, group of operatives in Afghanistan, as well as covert connections in Israel, Egypt and Pakistan, for the purpose of gaining useful intel and access to the necessary helicopters and weapons that would help turn the tide in favor of the Mujahideen and against the Soviets.

When the initial efforts of this small, humble campaign appear to cause visible losses to the Red Army and suddenly stop their advancement to a halt, the American Congress sees this as a momentous success and feel inspired -along with the appropriate motivation from Charlie- to increase the modest “anti-Communist budget” from $5 million to an unheard-of $500 million dollars -historically, this move would be the starting block for what would come to be known as the REAGAN DOCTRINE, which, in turn, would expand beyond the Afghan-Soviet conflict and provide similar support to other affairs like the IRAN-CONTRA-. Eventually, the Mujahideen impose themselves so overwhelmingly to the Soviets that the losses and defeats cause enough damage and embarrassment -additional to the mounting internal problems the Soviet Union already had, at this point- to force the Red Army to completely withdraw and abandon Afghanistan by 1990, much to the rejoicing of the Afghan people and the personal delight of Charlie and Gust.

While they do a small personal celebration watching the TV broadcast that shows the Soviet retreat, Gust conferences privately with Charlie and tells him the famous Chinese parable of the “Zen Master”, exhorting him to convince the Congress, the same way he did for the increasing of the war budget, to provide support for an Afghanistan now in a state of powerlessness and total destruction and at the risk of “the crazies” -what would become the Taliban- influencing the young majority of the surviving population. Charlie attempts to appeal to the good graces of the Congress with these recommendations, trying to obtain a meager fraction of what was used for war as a budget to rebuild roads and schools, but is utterly rebuffed by his fellow politicians, who believe there is no purpose to it, “the guys who caused all the mayhem were defeated with their help” and “dealing with the Eastern Bloc was a bigger priority”.

In the end, we see Charlie, a few years later, towards the end of the Cold War, being highly commended for his services “in favour of democracy and against Communism”, but feeling despondent over the growing possibility of these clandestine operations yielding unintended consequences that could turn Afghanistan into a breeding ground for enemies of the United States; meanwhile, Joanne, his friend and old flame, is known to have married another man. Before the credits roll, a title card reads a famous quote from Charlie: “THESE THINGS HAPPENED. THEY WERE GLORIOUS AND CHANGED THE WORLD… AND, THEN, WE F***KED UP THE ENDGAME”.In the early 1980s, Charlie Wilson is a womanizing US congressional representative from Texas who seemed to be in the minor leagues, except for the fact that he is a member of two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees. However, prodded by his major conservative supporter, Houston Socialite Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight the people are suffering in the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gustav “Gust” Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support to defeat the Soviet Union. However, Charlie Wilson eventually learns that while military victory can be had, there are other consequences and prices to that fight that are ignored to everyone’s sorrow.