Beating around the Bush

W
15, Nationwide

Psychologically, the film mostly plays it as some Freudian, almost East of Eden-style family psychodrama, with Bush desperate to earn the love of his coldly judgmental father, George H. Dubya Bush (James Cromwell), known as ‘Poppy’, and always falling short. There are, occasionally, some nice lines. ‘Partying and chasing tail...just who do you think you are?’ George Dubya Snr asks George Dubya Jnr at one point. ‘A Kennedy? We’re Bushes.’ If this account is to be believed, everything Bush does is just to impress his father, and that includes both running for the presidency and invading Iraq. Heavens, if Poppy had only held out for the odd phone call on his birthday, the world today would be a much different, and safer place.

The rest of the action, pretty much, takes place in the form of meetings in well-furnished rooms and, again, there are some nice moments — especially those where the President’s senior advisers manipulate him by making him think their ideas are his — and some terrific performances, particularly Toby Jones as Bush’s ‘brain’, Karl Rove, and Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, whom he plays like a circling shark. I’m not so sure about Thandie Newton’s Condoleezza Rice, though, which is much more a jarring Dead Ringers-style impersonation. There are no laughs, by the way. OK, OK, perhaps Stone didn’t want to poke fun at Bush, for whatever reason, but still. All those bloopers, all those mangled words, come on.

The trouble, basically, is that this film just doesn’t know what it is about. Is it about dynasty? Imperialism? Ambition? The dark side of democracy? What? And, consequently, you are just not made to care about any of it. Unlike The Queen — which also took a contemporary figure and focused on one event, the death of Princess Diana — the narrative doesn’t flow or sweep you along or engage. Anyway, that’s my point of view, which I’m sticking to, and now I’m very tired and off for a lie-down. I thank you and will see you next week when I may have another point of view but, then again, may not. It’ll all depend on whether I’m up to it.