To say that Oliver Stone is obsessed with recent history might be a huge understatement of his position in US cinema, but like him or not, he has provided one of the most undeniable voices in movies’ treatment of the last 50 years of headlines in this country and ones in which it has engaged. From the widely disregarded SALVADOR to his high points with PLATOON and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, Stone’s films have largely hit their targets with rare accuracy and wholly personal points-of-view. And he now counts three major films which deal with our most controversial American presidents.

Unlike the conspiratorial JFK and the penetrating NIXON, Oliver Stone’s most recent treatise on US heads of state, W is like neither of its predecessors and thereby lacks much of Stone’s earlier punch, though it delivers an entertaining and oddly balanced look at its titular subject. In fact, perhaps Stone is less interested in the tilt of his earlier works than in providing an objective analysis of a figure who is likely more prone to multiple interpretations than any of Stone’s prior interests.

Certainly, in Josh Brolin, who has hit his stride later in his career, having just turned 40, Stone has found the alter-ego that he sought with his former leading men, including James Woods, Charlie Sheen, Tom Cruise and others. Brolin not only fully inhabits George W. Bush, providing a detailed physical and vocal spin on the 43rd US President without resorting to staunch imitation or caricature, he actually makes us feel for the man despite our certain prejudiced feelings about his politics or public appearances.

Undoubtedly, the best parts of Stone’s film, which essentially wants to delve equally into the personal and public lives of GW Bush, are the moments about which most lay students of the president were not already informed. Throughout the film, we see W intercut in two planes of life – from his 1966 and onward years at Yale but before his venture into public life, and in the first term of his presidency where he must confront issues such as 9/11 and the succeeding ventures into Afghanistan and Iraq. Predictably, most of the biggest moments of his life are explored.

One of the limitations of examining a character such as Bush, as opposed to the complexities of a Richard Nixon, is that Bush ultimately provides a shallower forum for dramatic material, quite possibly because of the lack of inherent layers in the man himself, if not due to the lack of inside information about the man’s private life. What we are left with instead is a thesis that Bush has serious father figure issues. Due screen time is given to Bush’s relationship to his father, a somewhat miscast James Cromwell who is playing a more generic version of G HW Bush than Brolin is as his son, leading to a definite dramatic inconsistency. While this material is often interesting and does justify junior Bush’s life path, this point is made early on and is finally too one-note to narratively carry the entire film. Atypically for Stone, one of the only moments which manages to stir up ideas that dwell below the lens of the news cameras is found in an extensive scene among Bush and his cabinet members (all superbly cast) which suggests that Bush really did believe in the publicly stated reasons for the war in Iraq – finding weapons of mass destruction, spreading freedom and democracy, and so forth. The only twist in this sequence, strangely, is a short first-person account by Vice-President Dick Cheney where he makes a case for war being driven by the wealth of oil underneath both Iraq and Iran. However, this material does not dominate these scenes much less the whole film. Thus, we take Bush’s perspective that he engaged in war for what he considered morally correct reasons. Sadly and confusingly, the Stone movie which makes a connection to the Middle East, oil reserves, and US foreign policy is not found in W.

In the end, W is less a political film or another in Stone’s canon of counter-myths than a personal story about one man’s unlikely plight in the face of a strong family legacy. As this film reaches its climax in 2004, one wonders why the film was not created earlier in this decade so as to relate to the events of that year more closely than now when we are mere months away from the end of W’s presidency.

As for Stone himself, with WORLD TRADE CENTER and W serving as lightweight examinations of recent events, especially when compared to 1980s Stone films, one can only hope that he has another all-out attack on modern US policies still in his quiver. Where, for instance, is Oliver Stone’s scathing biopic, ostensibly entitled REAGAN? Or perhaps we can expect a pseudo-sequel to WALL STREET, this time entitled BAILOUT. Regardless, Stone’s strengths ultimately lie in more biting approaches to potentially damning subjects.