We’ve been following along with the development of War, Inc. for quite awhile on this site. The notion of someone tackling the Iraq situation with dark satire instead of the serious, dire crap we’ve all seen shoved into theaters to fail is a good one. Maybe it’ll flop as badly as all the other Iraq war movies, but Cusack’s attempt to try something different with this mess is both risky and exciting.
The movie is still a ways off, but longtime Blender and forum mod Pwalex was lucky enough to score an early screening of the film. What he has to say about it makes it sound like War, Inc. may deliver as advertised. Here’s Pwalex with a quick review of what he saw:
Yesterday afternoon, my school had the opportunity to get a visit from John Cusack, where we were treated to the first North American (non-test) screening of his new film War, Inc. and a thirty-minute talk from John and his co-writer Mark Leyner. While the talk was interesting, it wasn’t anything more than you’d get from watching him on a talk show. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about that, so I’ll just get on to the movie.
War, Inc. is a political satire that takes place in the near-future. Cusack plays Brand Hauser, a corporate assassin who is hired by the Tamerlane Corporation to kill the middle-eastern oil minister in the recently “liberated” Turaqistan. The Tamerlane Corporation has just completed the first ever fully corporate armed invasion of a sovereign country, and Hauser is sent in with the cover story that he is preparing the Tamerlane trade show to promote the company’s interests in the post-war country.
One of his main duties at the show is to help organize the very public wedding of Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff) who is a national pop star and super-skanky sex icon. And while I’ve never cared much for Hilary Duff, she seems like a totally different person when you see her playing the slutty, half-naked seductress.
The movie itself is quite entertaining, and very funny. There’s absolutely tons of situational and ironic humour. Like the fact that all the tanks have advertisements attached to them. Or that the headquarters for the head boss of Tamerlane is a bunker under a Popeye’s. And everything is just way over the top. Like the soldiers, who act as though hopped up on way too much caffeine and who just scream and shoot everything in sight. I could go on and on about the humour, but I think it’s pretty straight forward that it’s a satire.
The whole thing is very absurdist (to use Cusack’s own words), which is made apparent right away. It still does take some getting used to, though, so if you’re not expecting it you may find it pretty odd for the first ten minutes or so. And the worst thing about the absurdist nature of the film is that they end up taking it too far. It ends up being almost Austin Powers-like, where Cusack will kill like twenty people with no effort. And the ending winds up being pretty ridiculous. There are also some hiccups in the transition from the satirical and outrageous humour to the more serious moments that happen near the end. It almost felt like it came almost out of nowhere. At least it would have if it wasn’t so foreshadowed by the random flashbacks that Hauser experiences throughout. Flashbacks that are totally unnecessary except that they manage to fit Ben Kingsley and the tacky ending into the movie (and about a subtly as a croquet mallet to the head).
All-in-all, though, it was a hilariously great movie that made me laugh more than I have in quite a while (at a movie anyway). The humour was right up my alley, and hit on some fairly serious issues (which Cusack was very diligent in pointing out afterwards).
