the scene where gust and wilson first meet in wilson's office, nothing else in the movie really compares to it.

of the soviet helicopter pilots yapping before they got shot down was bizarrely bad imo, it was almost like something you would see in a steven seagall movie or something. i was like, wtf, is this in the same movie as that incredible scene between hoffman and hanks?

i don't even really agree with the movie's conclusion, giving a little bit of post war aid money or even a lot, wouldn't have made much difference imo in afghanistan in the early 90s. the problem wasn't aid, it was the same type of stupid ethnic and religious infighting that plagues post invasion iraq. the taliban(i assume the 'crazies' referred to in the movie at the end) did not gain power until much much later, and that was mostly because they positioned themselves as a 'law and order' solution.

anyway, it seemed to me that one of the 'messages' that the movie was trying to send was that if we had paid more attention to post war afghanistan then maybe there wouldn't have been the taliban or 9/11 wouldn't have happened. but that just seems really naive--imo the only thing that would have possibly addressed those issues is if the nato/us had sent in thousands of troops to restore order, as happened post 9/11. but after the afghans had just defeated the soviet occupation, there is no way that anyone was going to send troops in, even on a friendly basis. and the soviets probably would have viewed it as an act of war. and without that, i doubt that aid would have really mattered that much.

anyway, i was just disappointed that the movie morphed into a bad network documentary by the end.