War is big business, and big business loves war.
Hat's off to John Cusack (producer) and Joshua Seftel (director) for bringing this biting satire to the screen.
Cusack and his sister, Joan, play a murderous team in Turaqistan, a fictional nation invaded by America's private military named Tamerlane (its tanks are covered in ads like Nascar racers), run by a former VP (Dan Ackroyd) who holds a video conversation with Hauser (Cusack) while sitting on the can, looking strangely like Cheney.
Was Blackwater the model for Tamerlane?
The absolute cynicism of the war machine is portrayed in this dark comedy.
Cusack plays his role with detachment - he's a killer, and very good at it, and that's that. As the story unfolds, we learn of something deeper and utterly tragic behind his "career," and the way he's been deceived and manipulated by the head of operations (Ben Kingsley), a smarmy little creep intent on running the world from his bunker, which happens to be located in the basement of a Turaqistan Popeye Chicken Restaurant. At this moment, the film rightly captures the elaborate technology seducing the powerful into believing themselves to be invincible.
Cusack's role reminded me a bit of Robert Downey in "Iron Man" - the detachment, the irony, and the learning curve.
Just when things finally work out, the film seemingly ends just a heartbeat away from a final tragedy. Then a cut to Ackroyd putting a wild spin on things, justifying further American military engagement all in defense of our freedoms. As the saying goes, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
In the end, no one escapes the snare of such evil ... like Hannah Arendt's work on Eichman and her observation - "the banality of evil" - great national crimes are not committed by sociopaths or fanatics, but ordinary people who simply lose their way in the myriad of justifications, until the abnormal appears normal, and one's defense of such is patriotism.
In view of our nation's current involvement in Iraq and elsewhere, and the growing realization of what Bush and Gang have done to us, this is a movie for the moment, but also for the ages, for in every age, we confront our lust for war and our distorted notions of patriotism.
I think War, Inc. will become and remain a cult classic. I'm not much for predictions, but I'll put this one out there. Ten years from now, and twenty and thirty, we'll be seeing this film on late-night TV or whatever the means might be by then, and folks will see it for what it is - truth-telling to power.
And for no other reason, see this film for Joan Cusack - one of the greatest comedic faces to fill a screen.
Check out Arianna Huffington's review.
And the New York Times: Interrogation for Profit.
