Ender
06-18-2008, 02:33 AM
http://correctopinion.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/warincposter.jpg
War Inc.
2008
107 Minutes
Joshua Seftel
John Cusack
Joan Cusack
Marisa Tomei
Hillary Duff (?!)
Ben Kingsley
THE RUNDOWN:
In the near future, gigantic megacorporations have privatized everything and assumed total control of global politics (for the sake of staying on subject, we're going to pretend this is fiction). John Cusack is a contract killer who removes troublesome political figures for his military industrial employers, but his latest assignment to the recently "liberated" nation of Turaqistan is hampered by his overly-complicated cover, his nagging conscience, his attraction to an embedded reporter, and an odd relationship with a Turaqi pop star. Also, there's a war going on, which sometimes gets in the way.
SO IS IT A GOOD MOVIE?
Political satire is tricky business. By definition you're going to lose about 50% of audiences on the basis that they don't agree with whatever your position is. To pull it off, there's two things you have to be: Funny, and fearless. WAR INC. has balls, but what it doesn't have is laughs, or at least, not enough to make it worth your while.
The big problem with WAR INC. is that it's got an axe to grind, but it's not graceful with the grinding. The satire here is not subtle, nor particularly well executed, and most of the gags fall flat. That's not to say there aren't laughs and some very pointed black humor, but it's a movie that feels like it's trying way too hard. A great example is a scene midway through the flick in which a group of over-caffeneited soldiers deliver Cusack's dry cleaning, which they do in an armored jeep, while blasting heavy metal music and wildly firing their weapons into the air. You can see what they had in mind, but it's just not that funny to watch. Some of the other gags work better; the tanks and jeeps have ad space on the sides, Cusack uses his OnStar operator as a therapist, and a group of wannabe terrorists give the term "guerilla filmmaking" a whole new meaning. As funny as these bits are, and in all fairness they are VERY funny, there's just not enough of it to overcome the more flacid material
I love John Cusack, I really do. It's the rare John Cusack movie that I don't like, and even when the movie is bad, he usually isn't. But I have trouble buying him as a hitman. Yes, I've seen GROSSE POINT BLANK, but this is a very different movie with a very different tone (also Cusack is now ten years older, which makes some of the physicality a little harder to swallow). WAR INC. is, among many things, a send-up of action movies, where Cusack blows through scads of armed and armored bad guys using only a single automatic pistol and turns everything he touches into a deadly weapon. But the exaggerated quality of the action contrasts very poorly against its gritty realism and some of the more traumatic scenes of wartime carnage. Cusack is his usual awesome self, but the script (which he helped pen) hampers him with an unoriginal and generally uninteresting back story. Cusack's performance is solid, but he's in the wrong movie.
The rest of the cast are a mixed bag. Hillary Duff, what can you say about this woman? She's so sexy there's probably a law against it, and she embodies the nightmare pop diva persona to an eerie T, but her more serious scenes fall apart and her character is largely just a distraction. Similarly, Marissa Tomei is straightjacketed into a rather cliche crusading journalist character that gives her nothing to do. On the bright side, the supporting cast has more of a chance to shine; Joan Cusack plays her brother's manic assistant and she turns every possible eccentric affectation up to about the 11th degree. Dan Ackroyd has a small but amusing role as a Dick Cheney-esque VP (who still controls the country five months after leaving office) which livens things up quite a bit.
As the self-proclaimed Most Liberal Man in California (a weighty claim, but I have documents to back it up), I really appreciated what this movie had to say, but the whole thing is unwieldy and awkward, and the script is as awkward as a three-legged dog struggling to walk uphill. A pair of "twists" at the end were so obvious that Mr. Magoo could have seen them coming from the other side of town. Oddly, WAR INC. makes a rather effective war movie, featuring some surprisingly graphic battle scenes that actually reminded me a bit of THE CHILDREN OF MEN. Scenes like the bodies of lynched GIs dangling from the rafters of blownout factories and soldiers gunning down blank-eyed civilians struggling to escape a wartorn city have an almost Stanley Kubrick quality about them. I have no idea what these scenes are doing in this supposed comedy, but on their own merits they're very well done.
WAR INC wants very badly to be the DR. STRANGELOVE of the new millenium, but it should have gone back to the drawing board for a few more revisions. There's some decent material and a very pressing political message, but nothing that can be called a good movie.
THE GOOD:
-Solid cast, but underused. Supporting cast a big plus.
-Handful of good jokes, and the rare gag that does work is extra awesome.
-Well-executed (though woefully out of place) war scenes.
-Did I mention Hillary Duff is bewilderingly hot in this movie? Seriously. I think she can actually jerk a guy off with her gaze. It doesn't add much to the film, but still, worth talking about.
THE BAD:
-Most of it is just not that funny.
-Contrasting tones are a carwreck.
-Hackneyed plot devices and characterizations bog down the plot.
-John baby, I love what you were trying to do here, but you can't beat the audience over the head with your message.
THE UGLY:
-Something about Ben Kingsley's accent in this movie is like an icepick at the back of my brain. It's the aural equivalent of rubbernecking; I don't want to listen, but I can't stop myself.
War Inc.
2008
107 Minutes
Joshua Seftel
John Cusack
Joan Cusack
Marisa Tomei
Hillary Duff (?!)
Ben Kingsley
THE RUNDOWN:
In the near future, gigantic megacorporations have privatized everything and assumed total control of global politics (for the sake of staying on subject, we're going to pretend this is fiction). John Cusack is a contract killer who removes troublesome political figures for his military industrial employers, but his latest assignment to the recently "liberated" nation of Turaqistan is hampered by his overly-complicated cover, his nagging conscience, his attraction to an embedded reporter, and an odd relationship with a Turaqi pop star. Also, there's a war going on, which sometimes gets in the way.
SO IS IT A GOOD MOVIE?
Political satire is tricky business. By definition you're going to lose about 50% of audiences on the basis that they don't agree with whatever your position is. To pull it off, there's two things you have to be: Funny, and fearless. WAR INC. has balls, but what it doesn't have is laughs, or at least, not enough to make it worth your while.
The big problem with WAR INC. is that it's got an axe to grind, but it's not graceful with the grinding. The satire here is not subtle, nor particularly well executed, and most of the gags fall flat. That's not to say there aren't laughs and some very pointed black humor, but it's a movie that feels like it's trying way too hard. A great example is a scene midway through the flick in which a group of over-caffeneited soldiers deliver Cusack's dry cleaning, which they do in an armored jeep, while blasting heavy metal music and wildly firing their weapons into the air. You can see what they had in mind, but it's just not that funny to watch. Some of the other gags work better; the tanks and jeeps have ad space on the sides, Cusack uses his OnStar operator as a therapist, and a group of wannabe terrorists give the term "guerilla filmmaking" a whole new meaning. As funny as these bits are, and in all fairness they are VERY funny, there's just not enough of it to overcome the more flacid material
I love John Cusack, I really do. It's the rare John Cusack movie that I don't like, and even when the movie is bad, he usually isn't. But I have trouble buying him as a hitman. Yes, I've seen GROSSE POINT BLANK, but this is a very different movie with a very different tone (also Cusack is now ten years older, which makes some of the physicality a little harder to swallow). WAR INC. is, among many things, a send-up of action movies, where Cusack blows through scads of armed and armored bad guys using only a single automatic pistol and turns everything he touches into a deadly weapon. But the exaggerated quality of the action contrasts very poorly against its gritty realism and some of the more traumatic scenes of wartime carnage. Cusack is his usual awesome self, but the script (which he helped pen) hampers him with an unoriginal and generally uninteresting back story. Cusack's performance is solid, but he's in the wrong movie.
The rest of the cast are a mixed bag. Hillary Duff, what can you say about this woman? She's so sexy there's probably a law against it, and she embodies the nightmare pop diva persona to an eerie T, but her more serious scenes fall apart and her character is largely just a distraction. Similarly, Marissa Tomei is straightjacketed into a rather cliche crusading journalist character that gives her nothing to do. On the bright side, the supporting cast has more of a chance to shine; Joan Cusack plays her brother's manic assistant and she turns every possible eccentric affectation up to about the 11th degree. Dan Ackroyd has a small but amusing role as a Dick Cheney-esque VP (who still controls the country five months after leaving office) which livens things up quite a bit.
As the self-proclaimed Most Liberal Man in California (a weighty claim, but I have documents to back it up), I really appreciated what this movie had to say, but the whole thing is unwieldy and awkward, and the script is as awkward as a three-legged dog struggling to walk uphill. A pair of "twists" at the end were so obvious that Mr. Magoo could have seen them coming from the other side of town. Oddly, WAR INC. makes a rather effective war movie, featuring some surprisingly graphic battle scenes that actually reminded me a bit of THE CHILDREN OF MEN. Scenes like the bodies of lynched GIs dangling from the rafters of blownout factories and soldiers gunning down blank-eyed civilians struggling to escape a wartorn city have an almost Stanley Kubrick quality about them. I have no idea what these scenes are doing in this supposed comedy, but on their own merits they're very well done.
WAR INC wants very badly to be the DR. STRANGELOVE of the new millenium, but it should have gone back to the drawing board for a few more revisions. There's some decent material and a very pressing political message, but nothing that can be called a good movie.
THE GOOD:
-Solid cast, but underused. Supporting cast a big plus.
-Handful of good jokes, and the rare gag that does work is extra awesome.
-Well-executed (though woefully out of place) war scenes.
-Did I mention Hillary Duff is bewilderingly hot in this movie? Seriously. I think she can actually jerk a guy off with her gaze. It doesn't add much to the film, but still, worth talking about.
THE BAD:
-Most of it is just not that funny.
-Contrasting tones are a carwreck.
-Hackneyed plot devices and characterizations bog down the plot.
-John baby, I love what you were trying to do here, but you can't beat the audience over the head with your message.
THE UGLY:
-Something about Ben Kingsley's accent in this movie is like an icepick at the back of my brain. It's the aural equivalent of rubbernecking; I don't want to listen, but I can't stop myself.