Review: War, Inc.
War, Inc. Drected by Joshua Seftel. Actors: John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, and others. DVD Release Date: October 14, 2008. It’s hard to know what to say about this film. War, Inc. is definitely anti-war and is listed as such on Amazon. But it’s much more than that, which is usual with any film that John Cusack has a part in. Over the years, it’s gotten so that if Cusack is in a film we put it on our list, because while it may not always be to our taste it will definitely be worth watching and thought provoking. To give you a flavor of War, Inc., here’s the movie trailer:
War, Inc. has some similarities to Grosse Pointe Blank in that Cusack plays an assassin that’s just not getting the job satisfaction that he used to from the job. But Hauser (Cusack) has got a job to do so it’s off to Turaqistan to put an end to Omar Sharif, the politician, not the actor. Hauser, who has been wrestling with doubts and insecurities, is training himself to use hot sauce to quell his concerns. The film is, like Grosse Pointe Blank, a mix of philosophy, political comments, and believe it or not, the concerns most of us face every day. Sometimes surreal and at others laugh out loud funny, it nonetheless manages to highlight the ravages and absurdity of the war. It pokes fun at the way wars have been so sanitized that they are outsourced and used as corporate beachheads in the economics of greed. But it also deals with the people that get chewed up and spit out as they try to live their lives amidst the surrealistic landscape of war for money and profit. It’s definitely worth watching and thinking about. I’m sure the resonances with a current war that the US entered a while back and can’t seem to get out is just coincidence — or maybe not a coincidence, just taken to the inevitable extreme.