Oliver Stone's Bush biopic debuts to mixed US reviews
Mixed reviews for W, new film about president George Bush
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Wednesday, 08, Oct 2008 04:09
W, the new film concerning the life of president George W Bush, has received a mixed response from US movie critics.
While lead actor Josh Brolin was praised for his portrayal of the incumbent president, some writers thought the project was ill-suited to the silver screen.
The Guardian newspaper's Los Angeles correspondent Dan Glaister said W "plays like a TV movie rather than a cinematic epic" and labelled the film a more "conventional" presidential biopic than Stone's pictures about Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy.
And according to the Times newspaper, "the task of shoehorning all of this into a couple of hours gets the better of Stone".
Speaking earlier this year, Stone said: "Bush may turn out to be the worst president in history... That doesn't mean he isn't a great story.
"It's almost Capra-esque, the story of a guy who had very limited talents in life, except for the ability to sell himself," the director added, referring to the unlikely heroes of the films of It's A Wonderful Life director Frank Capra.
And No Country for Old Men star Brolin was commended for his "arresting" work as President Bush by Todd McCarthy, of influential trade newspaper Variety.
"The actor offers a more than reasonable physical approximation and an interpretation that's convincingly boisterous and determined," he wrote.
McCarthy described the film as a whole as an "unusual and inescapably interesting" piece that provides "a clear and plausible take on the current chief executive's psychological make-up".
W is released in the US on October 17th and in the UK on November 7th, though it will receive a gala screening at the Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival.