CRITICS’PICKS

After a season of feel-bad movies about the Iraq war, Mike Nichols’ riotous “Charlie Wilson’s War,” written by Aaron Sorkin, feels fresh, trenchant, relevant and unexpectedly entertaining. Set in the 1980s, it’s the story of an obscure congressman’s (Tom Hanks) unlikely crusade to arm the Afghans against the Soviets and thus help bring about the end of the Soviet Union. Aided by the sixth-richest woman in Texas (Julia Roberts) and a marginalized CIA agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the reprobate Wilson pulls off and wins the largest covert war of its type in history. Of course, the entire movie hinges on the irony of what happens much later, an irony made twice as acerbic by the fun that’s preceded it.