Saturday, July 12, 2008

Movie review: War, Inc.

In which John Cusack returns to the role of a gun for hire for the first time since Grosse Pointe Blank.

By John P. Meyer

War, Inc.

An assassin is assigned to kill a Middle East oil minister. His cover is that he's producing a big trade show that includes a wedding between a local pop star and a politico, but complications ensue.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on War, Inc.

First-time feature film director Joshua Seftel certainly has a colorful personal history. And his new movie, War, Inc., is an interesting film, loaded like a hi-cap clip with a rainbow of offbeat characters.

That being said, his dove-friendly, hands-off-the-world cinematic harangue can be a pretty odd (and off-putting) bird. While reveling in the pitch-dark humorous aspects of our nation's propensity for middle eastern imperialism, it tends to deliver its anti-war, anti-corporate message with an awfully heavy hand. It seems the filmmakers (including John Cusack, who - in addition to playing the lead - both produces and scripts) intend to make us feel bad about being Americans in order that we might work on changing our national identity.

Point taken, but that's a pretty tough pill to swallow in the guise of a popular entertainment, perhaps explaining why - while featuring a cast replete with 24-pt. typeface stars - it is receiving only limited release (at the two area Angelikas).

In terms of stars, I refer to John Cusack and sister Joan; Marisa Tomei; Hilary Duff (O.K., more a celeb than a star, I grant you, but still...); Ben Kingsley; Dan Akroyd; and Montel Williams, in a key voice-only supporting role.

Cusack returns to the role of a hit man for the first time since Grosse Pointe Blank ('97), and he still makes a good and believable one. As we open this film, strains of a score that could have been written by Morricone carry us through the snowy streets of Alaska as Brand Hauser (Mr. Cusack), clad in mukluks and parka, enters a seedy Arctic bar to take out his primary with extreme prejudice. All the chaps lined up at the bar behind the target inadvertently become secondaries, getting themselves extremely terminated in grand innocent bystander fashion. We see our first flashbacks of a traumatic experience from Hauser's past; these glimpses of a violent encounter reappear as the action progresses.

Hauser with a pair of P99s doing his best Chow Yun Fat

Flying off in his private jet to his next assignment, Hauser consults with his "GuideStar" cockpit assistant (Montel Williams), who provides not only geographical, routing and lodging info, but also serves as a moderately effective shrink. And Hauser needs one.

He's grown disenchanted with his job as a full-time government-employed hired gun, because the assignments have changed from taking out threats to his country's security, to ones in which he's routinely assigned to kill people in order to maximize profits. (It should be pointed out that the governmental power posited in this fictional future is no longer a public entity, but a private enterprise known as The Tamerlane Corporation.) While Hauser tries to get out, they just keep pulling him back in.

On his latest mission, he finds himself landing in war-torn (yet extremely profitable) Turaqistan, where upstart political leader Omar Sharif (Lyubomir Neikov) has the gall to think he can get away with building an oil pipeline across his own country - without contracting through Tamerlane. Naturally, he has to be stopped and someone more reasonable (i.e., sympathetic to Tamerlane) put in his place.

Hilary as Yonica

On site in Turaqistan, Hauser's cover persona is the organizer of a tech/trade event showcasing - what else? - Tamerlane services, devices and applications. Joan Cusack plays local operative Marsha Dillon, Hauser's on-site undercover contact; while Ms. Tomei - managing to maintain her innate sexiness while dressed (for the most part) in staid journalist garb - portrays Natalie Hegalhuzen, correspondent for a notoriously left-wing news outfit.

Native Texan Hilary Duff takes on the role of mid-east pop icon Yonica Babyyeah, whose impending marriage to a gansta-ish local politico serves as the lynchpin holding together a series of plotlines.

Dan Akroyd has a bit part as the Vice President, while Ben Kingsley has a somewhat more substantial role as both a demon from Hauser's past and the shape-shifting focus of his rage in the present.

As for biting political satire, it's made somewhat more digestible by being interspersed with thoughtful acid humor. Take the tanks rolling through town bearing advertising placards ("The Palace Casino"; "Sturm Oil") and the cab driver whose photo ID shows him in full-face hood, suitable for his later appearance on a hostage video. (Hint: choose your cab drivers carefully when traveling abroad.)

And one of these guys is her cab driver

But the movie's moralistic political agenda waxes so frequently unwieldy (witness the "implanted" reporters getting their war fix via virtual reality; the high-kick chorus line made up of prosthetic-limbed amputees; and the referenced book title: How I Conquered the World and Worked Out Issues With My Dad) that it threatens to become one of those entertainment destinations which preaches exclusively to the ranks of those already amongst the choir.

Most entertaining storytelling device: the ever-morphing vid-screen image of The Viceroy (a Wizard of Oz stand-in, particularly in light of the fact that the action takes place in a secure zone known as Emerald City). The Viceroy's visage continuously alters from one kick-ass U.S. historical character to another: George Washington to Herbert Hoover to George Custer to John Wayne to Ronald Reagan to Robert E. Lee to Hulk Hogan to Mr. T... it's a traveling side show of patriotic bad asses, with a few surprising selections thrown in for good measure. (Moral: the faces may change, but the message remains the same.)

Filming was done in Bulgaria, and the locations stand in quite believably for a war-ravaged middle eastern locale. Folks at the Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia appear to have access to the requisite quantities of special effects exploding devices, as plenty of boom and bluster and automatic gunfire is used to establish the local color for the proceedings.

Need to get out of the brutal midday sun for 107 minutes, and don't mind a bit of left-wing liberal anti-war cinematic diatribe, courtesy of First Look Studios? Then pop into your nearest North Texas Angelika for a bit of the old ultra-profitable violence.

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