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Neither damning enough for incensed liberals nor reverent enough for the increasingly dwindling number of supporters for the 43rd president of the United States, Oliver Stone's W. aims to do the unthinkable: dramatize the charmed life of George W. Bush (Josh Brolin, good at the older quasi-seriousness, less adept at the shit-eating grins) as merely that of a man, a man with a charged relationship with his father, drinking problems, and a track record for underachievement. Stone focuses on the run-up to the Iraq invasion and the Yale fraternity years to the Texas governorship that somehow paved the way for W.'s 2000 run at the White House. The result is something that can't decide if the life and times of George W. Bush are best suited for a Theodore Dreiser American tragedy or an Alan Jackson country song, and what's left is a version of the far too recent past that doesn't condescend to have anything new to offer.

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