Awesome / Charlie Wilson's War

• Charlie's description of how he got into politics after a neighbor killed his dog.
  Charlie Wilson: ...and then I remembered Mr Hazard was an elected official, he was the head of the town council. His re-election every two years was a foregone conclusion. So come election day I drove over to the black section of town—now these people hadn’t voted in any of these elections. I filled up my car with black voters and drove them to the polling place and waited and drove 'em on home, but before they got out of the car I said "I don’t mean to influence you, but I think you should know that Mr Charles Hazard intentionally killed my dog." About 400 ballots were cast in that election. I drove 96 of them to the polls. Hazard lost by 16 votes. And that's the day I fell in love with America.
  • Bonnie's doe-eyed reaction to the story makes it double as a Heartwarming Moment.
  • It's also a sign of Charlie's Hidden Depths: Up to this point, he's come across as a cavorting, vice-imbibing Texan blowhard who just got schooled by the current leader of Pakistan^note  And, as Wilson notes, you know you've hit rock bottom when you're told you have moral failings by a man who hanged his predecessor in a coup.. To be fair, he still is all of these things, but it also shows that he really does know how to work the system. And he will do so brilliantly for the remainder of the film.
• After coming across as a nerdy kid who's playing chess with four separate people^note  Prompting Charlie to note that such skills would provide useful if they were ever invaded by Boris Spaasky, Mike Vickers rattles off everything that the Afghans would need to beat the Soviets. Sometimes the most dangerous men are the ones who don't fire a single shot.
• Gust telling off Cravely for insulting not just him but every immigrant and child of an immigrant who works for the CIA. Doubles as a Funny Moment thanks to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's brilliantly outraged-yet-slightly-deranged portrayal. Then he smashes the window for a second time and walks off triumphantly.
  • There's also his accusation that the reason why Craverly hasn't fired him is because he knows Craverly is sleeping with a (presumably higher-up) coworker's wife. Anyone else who makes that accusation to a high-level member of the CIA would get demoted to cleaning toilets in Tierra del Fuego so fast their head would spin. But all Craverly can do is sputter "I'm...I'm not even gonna dignify that with a response." Immediately followed by Gust rattling off the name of the hotel and the room number where these trysts are happening. The man has nuts of titanium. And clearly, based on Craverly's reaction...he's not wrong.

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