To Oliver Stone this is fair and balanced, hey he didn’t have anything in the movie about Bush plotting 9-11 or blowing up levees in New Orleans.
I saw Josh Brolin, Oliver, and Charlie Rose just laughing their asses off about Bush with some serious conversation about his evangelical believes that Stone believes he violated.
Of course the Brolin’s step-mother is Barbara Mega-Streisand and his father played Ronald Reagan in a more dispicable movie about the Reagan’s.
They did camp that up in the film, but I thought Bush's evangelist friend (portrayed by Stacy Keach) was played straight and fairly respectfully, not as a Robert Bakker metasleazoid.
They went after Bush 43 remorselessly, and I thought Richard Dreyfuss was going to bust a gut camping up Dick Cheney. Tony Blair was played straight and they played up to Colin Powell. George Tenet was probably fairly portrayed, but they played games with their portrayal of Dr. Rice.
Laura they knew to leave the hell alone and play by the book. They portrayed her straight, only they didn't give her as much credit as she deserves IMHO for pulling Dubya out of his alcoholism. She was a major factor.
They left most of the rest of the Bushes alone, probably because Bush 41, by shunning the run to Baghdad, implicitly condemned 43's determination to unseat Saddam.
They leave Clinton's policy toward Saddam untouched. Gee, wonder why? They also don't mention that Blair and Clinton had agreed on regime change in Baghdad -- so that's a lie by omission that plays into the hard spin Stone puts on the runup to war, and the recension of the war when Saddam's rope-a-dope strategy heated up.
They don't show the capture of Saddam or the killing of his wolf cubs, nor any of the pitiful scenes when Iraqis dug up the Ba'athists' gross handiwork.
Nope, just "shock and awe" and lots of ironic, sardonic, smartassic scenes with Bush's advisors, and the tune from Robin Hood playing in the background.
There was one unconsciously very funny scene about midway through. Karl Rove is tuning up Bush for a news conference during the campaign for Governor of Texas. Rove addresses a style point, telling him "do something about that Texas swagger you've got." "Swagger? In Texas we call it walkin'!"
Non-Texans might not get that. I laughed out loud ..... in a nearly-empty theater.