W.

Marc didn't like it:

The story Stone presents has been told over and over, creating grooves in the brains of Bush-haters. Stone could have gone for something more subtle, but instead he chose the dartboard approachwith one exception. Bush's religious conversion is treated sensitively and believably, and it leads to the best scene in the film, where the younger Bush and a cadre of political advisers try to convince the patrician Episcopalian 41 to speak the language of born agains. 41 didn't go for that.

I enjoyed it a great deal but was at first surprised. It isn't a hit-job, as all the reviews tell you. It portrays Bush as a victim of circumstance and of just being completely out of his depth. That's far too kind, I think. But on reflection, it felt to me like a bit of a boomer reach-out. Stone has some things in common with Bush: generationally, temperamentally, if not politically. It was a boomer thing. And I didn't quite understand.