I wanted to catch Charlie Wilson’s War when it came out in the theater but never got around to it.  Well that’s the beauty of Netflix.  Eventually these movies find you.  So I popped CWW in the DVD player the other day to see what all the fuss was about.  What unfolded was an interesting story of how a morally questionable Senator teamed up with CIA hothead to divert millions of dollars into arming Afganistani fighters with anti-tank and anti-helicopter weapons.  Afghanistan was getting crushed by the Russians and Charlie Wilson set out to fight the Russians the only “safe” way to do so… by pretending that you’re not.

It was a decent enough movie, very well acted by Tom Hanks and Phillip Seymour Hoffman but would have been forgettable were it not for the very next film I watched.  One that Charlie Wilson’s War oddly and unexpectedly enough was a perfect setup for.  That movie was…

One of the last scenes of Charlie Wilson’s War has Charlie at a table with some other senators trying to get one million dollars to help build schools in Afghanistan.  This is after he has funneled millions and millions more to giving Afghanistan fighters weapons.  No one will budge.  The one million dollars seems excessive to the others and is shot down.  Wilson warns that pouring money into Afghanistan for war but not so much as lifting a finger to help rebuild what was left over from that war will create a country worse off than before.  But it’s obvious that Afghanistan was just a pawn, and that these congressmen never cared about the freedom of the Afghan people – they just wanted to beat the Russians.

The Kite Runner is set in Afghanistan, both before and after the time covered in the film Charlie Wilson’s War.  This story of friendship between two boys in Kabul is tragic but very moving.  Amir and Hassan grow up together because Hassan’s father works as a servant for Amir’s father.  They run the streets of 1970’s Kabul (before the Russian invasion) working together Kiting.  By the way, did I just miss out on this whole underworld of kite fighting or what?  I thought you just flew kites, I did not know that you fought with them!  The Kite fighting scenes were mesmerizing.  It’s hard to get into too much more without giving away too much, so suffice it to say that The Kite Runner was a great drama set in a very tragic Afghanistan amid the height of the Taliban’s power.

And take a pass on Charlie Wilson’s War… unless you plan to watch it right before The Kite Runner.