W.

Oliver Stone's timely W.is a shallow but fascinating biopic, writes Michael Dwyer

W. ***

Directed by Oliver Stone.

Starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ellen Burstyn, James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, Scott Glenn, Ioan Gruffudd, Toby Jones, Stacy Keach, Bruce McGill, Thandie Newton, Jason Ritter, Jeffrey Wright, Noah Wyle

PG cert, gen release, 129 min

THERE ARE aspects of Oliver Stone's personality and career that invite comparisons with soap opera characters. They can be written out of the script, and even killed off, but the prospect of their return, however contrived or unlikely, cannot be discounted.

In the 30 years since he won the first of his three Oscars, for the screenplay of Midnight Express, Stone's fortunes have vacillated as wildly as a seesaw. Blessed with unswerving self-belief, Stone can walk through a storm and hold his head up high, as he did when he was derided for his most recent features, Alexanderand World Trade Center. Now he has rebound yet again with another factually based movie that could hardly be more timely and media-attuned than his portrayal of the outgoing incumbent of the Oval Office in W.

Having directed a trilogy of movies inspired by his own experiences as a decorated volunteer in Vietnam ( Platoon, Born on the Fourth of Julyand Heaven and Earth), Stone has made a third movie named after a US president, following JFK and Nixon.

Father figures loom large in Stone pictures and never more so than in W.,which is assembled as a riches-to-riches saga that dwells on George W Bush (played by Josh Brolin) as an insecure man who feels overshadowed and unloved by his father (James Cromwell). They address each other as Poppy and Junior.

Jolting back and forwards in time, W.charts the sharp surges and steep dips in the approval ratings Bush gets from his father and from the American public.

Stone's movie begins eerily playfully in 2002, during a White House meeting where the president and his core team of advisers coin the term "axis of evil" while consumed with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The film cuts to 1966, when Bush is a rowdy, boozy Yale student, and moves on to mark his failure in various occupations. This prompts his deeply disappointed father to ask, "Who do you think you are? A Kennedy?" It ultimately portrays Junior as intellectually and emotionally immature.

Brolin immerses himself in the role with commitment and energy, and Stone surrounds him with an astutely chosen cast. Richard Dreyfuss is robust as the Machiavellian, hawkish Dick Cheney, who needs to be told by Bush to keep his ego in check. Toby Jones portrays political adviser

Karl Rove as a ventriloquist whose dummy is the self-appointed leader of the free world. As Donald Rumsfeld, Scott Glenn wears a permanent phoney smile while mangling language in utterances such as "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". And a frozen-coiffured Thandie Newton is a dead ringer for Condoleeza Rice.

The film claims that Poppy always favoured Junior's younger brother Jeb (Jason Ritter), who became governor of Florida. It's perfectly understandable that Poppy never could have imagined that Junior would succeed him as the next Republican president of the US, or that W. would be re-elected, unlike his father who, during a tearswept family gathering in the movie, loses to Bill Clinton.

Unusually for a Stone film, W.is mellow and spiked with broad-humoured one-liners, as if the director cannot take his subject too seriously, a feeling the audience seems encouraged to share, despite the gravity of the issues the film has to raise, from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq.

Sketchy and shallow as it is, bordering on the parody levels of Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impersonations and entirely lacking in significant revelations or fresh observations, W.exerts an irresistible - and scary - fascination because truth really is stranger than fiction.