Stone's Psychodrama of Party Animal Turned President is Missing Its Final Act

It is one of the most eagerly awaited films of the electoral season, a biopic of the Republican incumbent by a controversially "liberal" director that could swing an election.

Finally, "W.", Oliver Stone's film about George Bush's life, was revealed to the press last night ahead of its release to the public next week.

The film has all the elements of the best psychodramas: an overbearing father, a straight-talking mother, a favorite son/brother, and a cast of sycophants and true believers.

But it is the comedy - some very dark - that will stay in the minds of the audience. Bush, uncannily portrayed by Josh Brolin, saying "Guantanamero" instead of "Guantánamo"; comparing himself to Moses - "He wasn't a very good speaker," Bush says to explain his own call to politics, "but he knew"; and agreeing with Laura, his wife, that the musical Cats is "one thing I'll stay up late for".

But the film plays like a TV movie rather than a cinematic epic (its title is the initial of the president's middle name, Walker), and it will not shift the political landscape ahead of the US election on November 4. Instead, it will reinforce the feelings of those who believe Bush was a dangerous incompetent, and provide ammunition to those on the other side of the political spectrum who prefer to worry about the bias of the liberal media.

Stone does, knowingly or not, point up the comparison with another political ingenue, one derided for a lack of knowledge of political events and a diminished worldview. Brolin's Bush mangles phrases in a manner that can only bring to mind the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. He even essays a few Palinesque winks.

W.'s semi-comic depiction of much recent history will appeal to many. Tony Blair gets a cameo, while familiar figures from the past seven years of the Bush presidency hide around each corner.

But, in keeping with Bush's fratboy image, he is first seen in the midst of a hazing ceremony, sitting in a metal bathtub at Yale. The similarities with waterboarding are pronounced, although in this case the young men are having Jack Daniels poured down their throats.

Yale provides an intriguing backstoriy to Stone's involvement with the W. story: the two were contemporaries at the Ivy League college, although they did not meet. Stone has recounted that Bush brought up the connection, of which the director had been unaware, when they met in his first presidential campaign in 1999. Bush, Stone says, was very familiar with his work.

While their paths diverged, with one going to Vietnam and immersing himself in radicalism, the other famously dodging the draft and immersing himself in the advantages offered by his family's standing, the two shared some characteristics, traits the film plays up.

So we meet Bush the party animal: drinking, flirting, slipping from one job to the next. His love of life has his stern father, portrayed by James Cromwell, so enraged that at one point he berates him with the words: "Who do you think you are, a Kennedy?" But, as in life, so in the movies; the wayward son meets the woman of his dreams and sorts out his life. Laura Bush, played by Elizabeth Banks, leads him out of the darkness and helps him towards the light of the born again movement.

While his relationship with his father is central to the film, it is Bush's mother, Barbara, played by Ellen Burstyn, who gets to deliver the film's most telling line. Confronted with the notion that the ne'er do well son plans to run for high office she exclaims: "Governor of Texas? You must be joking!"

The film marks Stone's latest attempt to portray the lives of significant, if not great, American leaders. But while JFK proved controversial for its conspiratorial take on the Kennedy assassination, W. is far more conventional in its assessment of the current president.

The core of the psychodrama, and the director's explanation of his subject's motivation, is Bush's relationship with his domineering father. As is his wont, Stone explains the duel between the two in stark terms: he has them fight an imaginary duel at the close of the film.

Of necessity - a necessity probably provoked by the imminent election - the film, which was only begun in May, will be released before the end of the story. With W still alive and still in office, the final act has yet to be written.

Maverick movies

Commandante: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro allowed Stone unprecedented access to make this 2003 documentary portrait, which met with a storm of protest from Cuban-Americans. The director followed Commandante a year later with Looking for Fidel.

Nixon: Stone's 1995 biopic of the US president was assailed by Richard Nixon's family as "reprehensible" but it was nominated for four Oscars, including one for Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of the president as a paranoid, lonely man, riven with angst.

JFK: The director's take on theories surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy divided critics but delighted conspiracy fans with its story of a plot to kill the president that stretched to the upper reaches of the US establishment.

Born on the Fourth of July: The 1989 adaptation of the autobiography of the Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic was the second in Stone's trilogy about the war. It won rave reviews and Stone's second Academy Award for best director- he picked up his first for Platoon in 1986.

Salvador: Stone nailed his political colors to the mast with a sympathetic portrayal of leftwing revolutionaries and a resounding condemnation of US policy in Central America in the story of a US photojournalist's efforts to reveal military atrocities in El Salvador's civil war.