My apologies if someone has already posted on this movie. War, Inc. is a blast, the most fun I’ve had watching a movie all year. It is an absurdist take (clearly indebted to Dr. Strangelove) on the corporatization of war and nation-building. A fictional Halliburton (the Tamerlane Corporation) has an exclusive contract to rebuild, privatize and generally rape the central asian country of Turaqistan, and every aspect that we have seen in recent years in Iraq is ramped up to 11 to comic effect. The politics of the movie are crude and brutally funny, with moments of real power and poingancy. In particular, a scene in a bombed out town at night, as assorted military contractors and local militias fire blindly at each other, explosions rake the landscape and refugees flee, bring to mind the bridge-building scene in Apocalypse Now.
John Cusak is the corporation’s hit man with a heart of gold, and the movie elicits hysterical performances from Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei and a host of minor characters. The story of redemption for John Cusack is hardly original, but the movie still pulls very few punches, and occasionally hits you right in the gut. The choice of eschewing ernest characters offering their critiques of American imperial power and instead relying upon images and humor makes this even stronger. I suspect that there will be less of this kind of movie in the next couple of years as the afterglow of Obama’s victory lingers. This one is well worth watching, if only as a reminder of the world Obama has inherited.
Wow–it got such a lukewarm reception. You sold me.
Well, bear in mind that I have been very disappointed with movies this year (I still can’t find enough for a 2008 top 5), so the bar is low. Still, I really enjoyed this, partly for the politics, partly for the craft, but mostly because of Joan Cusack. Has nobody seen ‘Synecdoche New York’?
I second Chris’ rec. I also really enjoyed this one, much more than I thought I would. Not every joke works, and a few are very lame. But there’s a lot of smart/funny stuff going on here, and much more of it succeeds than stumbles. Mark Leyner was the chief writer of the script (along with Cusack and his writing partner). Leyner has written a few books I loved at the time, like My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and Et Tu, Babe.
It’s not nearly as good as Grosse Pointe Blank, but in some ways this is nearly a revisiting of his hit-man character from that movie, complete with Joan Cusack as his assistant (who seems to be morphing into Joan Crawford), and a couple of cameos by Dan Aykroyd, who is playing a literal version of Dick Cheney.
I never found Cusack believable as a bad guy in The Ice Harvest, but here, as a quasi-baddie, wrapped up in government hit-jobs, he sells the character, which is no easy thing considering the absolute absurdity of the film. I love watching Cusack act, but I’m pretty selective on the movies of his I’ll see. I’ve completely avoided seemingly awful stuff (to my mind) like Grace is Gone, Must Love Dogs and Martian Child.
Unrelated: I rewatched the Z Channel documentary recently, and then rented several movies that are featured in it, some of which I’ve never seen, or only seen butchered TV versions: Once Upon a Time in America, Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (amazing Rutger Hauer movie), Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid… So while ’08 may have sucked at theaters (and I agree with Chris on that), I’ve been watching a bunch of killer stuff on disc at home.
I liked this–perhaps not as much as Chris, but I echo his and Mauer’s appreciations. My favorite bits were the most Leyneresque, the throwaway lines and background detailing and straight-faced absurdity (e.g., the Ancient Rome theme park, now in ruins; the morphing images of heroic heads–from John Wayne to Jesse Ventura to Flipper–which stood for the Turaqi Viceroy on monitors everywhere). I admired its aspirational viciousness, its righteous comic fury, even if that produced as many clunkers (Dan Ackroyd’s potty humor take on Cheney) as cuts. And I thought its ostensible plot, complete with familial redemption for the amoral Cusack protagonist (copyright protected)… well, that was a constant drain on its energy. Still, we liked it. Thanks for the rec, C & M.