STUDIO: First Look
RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2008
STARRING: John Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Ben Kingsley, Joan Cusack, Hilary Duff, and Dan Aykroyd
WRITTEN BY: Mark Leyner & Jeremy Pikser & John Cusack
DIRECTED BY: Joshua Seftel
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: R

Political comedy is a dangerous game, especially in today's climate. Show me a stand-up comedian and I'll show you someone with a predictable George W. Bush joke in their back pocket. On the same token, show me a comedy screenwriter and I'll show you someone with a few jabs at the current administration who dreams of writing the great political dissection of the current clusterf*ck we call American foreign policy. Perhaps it's because I'm so deeply involved in politics and upset by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the gang, but I find most comedy aimed at the administration pretty weak.

Ripping on Bush's stupidity or Cheney's pure evil doesn't take much skill. They're easy targets. What, Bush is dumb? Cheney makes money off carnage? Tell me something new. An equally obvious target for satire in recent years has been the celebutante world of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Somehow, the very messy War, Inc. tries to get all of it into one movie, shooting barbs at the teeny bopper music industry, war profiteering, and the ridiculous foreign policy of the Bush administration. Like throwing water balloons at the side of a barn, all of the targets feel easy to hit and when War, Inc. tries to actually get serious in the final act, the whole thing collapses.

Reportedly developed as a sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank (I'm happy that it changed because I don't want the reputation of that great movie tarnished), War, Inc. stars John Cusack as Brand Hauser, a hit man who has found his way into the world of people who make big money off the death of others. Think Halliburton. Hauser's latest assignment is to kill a Middle East oil minister in the fictional country of Turaqistan (he's given his task by the clearly Cheney-impersonating Dan Aykroyd). The cover for the hit is a war trade show, where powerful people show off the weapons that help them run the world. While at the trade show, Brand runs into a liberal reporter (Marisa Tomei), who he falls for, of course, and crosses paths with the entertainment, a Middle Eastern pop star named Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff). Brand has to keep the pop princess alive, convince the reporter he's not that bag a guy, and kill an oil baron all in just a few days. Of course, Turaqistan is also a war-torn country with regions that can't even be approached by civilians, which you know eventually will be in the third act.

There are glimpses of creativity in War, Inc. that show what the movie could have been. I like that the bunker for the world-running Viceroy is under a Popeye's and no one in movies can emphasize an f-bomb quite like Joan Cusack (who plays Brand's assistant at the show), but the problem with satirizing obvious targets like this is not just the obvious nature of the subject but the fact that it feels a little desperate. War, Inc. wants to be Dr. Strangelove for a new era but that desire is apparent in every frame. You can't be a clever satire if you're so blatantly screaming that fact with every barb. It's like flop sweat on a comedian - it just gives the audience a feeling of desperation.

I'll admit, the cast is likable enough (even Duff shows more range than she has before), and the idea is relatively clever enough that I was willing to go with some of War, Inc. until the final act. When the satire turns serious with innocent victims getting gunned down en masse, I was done with this War. Like the Iraq conflict itself, the exit strategy fails and the whole thing becomes a complete mess. And it wasn't that great an idea from the beginning.