The last time Tom Hanks dipped into the Cold War we got 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War, a marginal piece of Oscar-bait that tried to claim a boozing, womanizing Democrat Congressman had won the Cold War … and President Ronald Reagan was a bystander.
With Reagan finally starting to get the credit he deserves from historians on his magnificent handling of Communist Russia, Hanks and director Mike Nichols tried to swoop in and steal his thunder with this overly-mannered piece of self-conscious revisionism, which was scripted by Aaron Sorkin.
Like almost all openly left-wing films, Charlie Wilson’s War went down hard at the box office, even with Julia Roberts and her terrible southern accent as co-star.
THR reports that Hanks is circling another kick at the Cold War cat with the story of James Donovan, the real-life attorney who negotiated the release of Gary Powers, the U2 spy plane pilot shot down over the Soviet Union. Steven Spielberg, who is looking to jump on something, might direct.
The incident occurred in 1960 when Dwight Eisenhower was president, so look for Ike to be turned into either a villain a fool or a Democrat.
When Tom Hanks isn’t rewriting history, trashing Christianity and the Catholic Church, yukking it up with a guy in blackface, or accusing our WWII vets of waging a war of “racism and terror,” I’m told he’s our generation’s Jimmy Stewart.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.