This film is unbelievably biased. It is pure anti-Soviet cold-war drivel and it is historically inaccurate. Robert Gates says that the CIA began giving aid to Islamic fighters in Afghanistan months **before** the Soviet invasion. Jimmy Carter signed an order on July 3, 1979 to give aid to the Mujahedeen. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap. "The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border," Zbigniew wrote to President Carter, ...we gave to the USSR its Vietnam War". Charlie Wilson's importance is wildly blown way out of proportion. The real-life Wilson had always been a right wing government good-old-boy who liked war. He was a commie-hating cold-war warrior. In the film we are lead to think that Wilson was simply a good time loving, womanizing, good old boy Congressman that never really grew up until he saw in person poor Afghan refugees: themselves poorly drawn caricatures of Afghan citizens. At this moment in the film Wilson changed and found a righteous cause. Born again Charlie!! Pure Hollywood nonsense! The real Wilson was not a nice guy. He was a friend of Nicaraguan tyrant Anastasio Samoza. Wilson's buddy in the movie (Philip Seymour Hoffman's character) is based on the CIA operative Gust Avrakotos. Army colonels led a coup in Greece in the 1960s; Avrakotos was the CIA main contact with the totally horrible fascist regime. Avrakotos fled Greece in the late 70s, with a very nasty reputation. The consequences of this cold war game are ignored by this crappy Hollywood movie. The weapons the U.S. supplied the Mujahedeen were used to wage a lengthy, bloody civil war in Afghanistan. Reagan's claim that the Afghan fighters were the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers is absurd. More brainless propaganda. Half the CIA money went to the monster Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who in his youth threw acid in the face of an unveiled women. The CIA and US government would ally with anybody against the USSR. The terrorists received Stinger missiles, US Army training, and lots of money. The Taliban and the group that came to be known as Al-Qaida came from the Afghan civil war and were taught by the USA how to fight. There was little real concern for the fate of Afghanistan and its people. Washington never cared about the Afghan people in the first place ... and they still don't care. They are just pawns in The Great Game. The movie is a formulaic cliché, with it's warped fixation on the importance of the individual and its disregard for facts. Most Americans -- and reviewers here -- apparently take movies like this seriously, but this kind of crap makes the USA a joke to the rest of the world.