"War, Inc."

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.

Stop-Loss

The young man walking out behind said quietly to himself, "It was so real."

I let him pass - he was walking alone, well-built, wearing blue scrubs ... was he a vet?

This is a film to see if you care about what's happening to the military in this meat-grinder of a war.

The film features a young man on his last day of duty back in the USA after his second tour in Iraq. But as he's getting his affairs in order to go back home, he's issued orders to report back to his unit for redeployment to Iraq. "There must be some mistake; I'm getting out today. I'm going back home."

"No sir, these orders are clear. You've been stop-lossed."

He goes AWOL ... and makes his way, finally, to New York and an attorney who specializes in helping people get a new identity and make their way to Canada for a new life. But called home to Texas because a war buddy took his own life, he meets with family again, loving parents, the father a Vietnam Vet - and heads to Mexico instead.

I'll not devulge how the film ends, but it powerfully portrays what all sociologists of war now understand - men neither fight nor die for country, but for the soldier next to them. In the most basic sense of the word, it's all about community, falling in for one another.

The power of the film is its "commentary" without commentary - how constant redeployment and stop-lossing is tearing the military apart, destroying families and leaving in its wake thousands of seriously injured and emotionally impaired women and men.

Politically, there's a certain glamor to war - ala Bush & McCain - but every personal account of war says the same thing: War is hell!"

Even the WW2 veteran, proud and stoic, is reluctant to talk about his experience - to kill or be killed does hard things to the soul, and when a professional soldier is repeatedly exposed without the hope of returning home, as did the WW2 citizen-soldier, the soul is compromised, even in the strongest personality.

Anyway, the message is profound, and the acting, cinematography and music, fits well.

Hats off to Kimberly Peirce (writer and director) and Paramount Pictures for bringing us this film.

Turtles Can Fly

“Turtles Can Fly,” an Iraqi film about children in war – heart-wrenching – terrible reminder that adults fight the wars, but the children fight, too – to understand, to survive, to make sense out of it, and find their own way.

The children die, too; they lose limbs, family and friends – they lose their character, their childhood, their hope. Powerful nations, such as ourselves, like to glorify war, and memory itself cleanses us of the terror, and all we have left is the glory, such as our memories of “The War” – a war with a good cause, I suppose, and America has been looking ever since for another good cause to support its aggressive policies throughout the world. We are an aggressor nation! Oops, did I just write that?

But getting back to the film - tremendous acting, pathos, sorrow - a portrait of children in war.

"Wars and rumors of wars" said Jesus. Yup, and how we love 'em - the smell of napalm in the morning ... damn the torpedoes, full-speed ahead ... American, right or wrong ... and all the other nonsense that fuels the illusion.

I suppose some wars are necessary, and some may even have the hint of virtue in our all-too violent world, but war is hell, that's for sure, so we need journalists to remind us, and pundits to challenge us, and touching, searing, films like this, lest we succumb to our own self-spun illusions and turn a blind eye to the truth.

PG-13 - a fine film in all regards: music, just enough; the acting superb, cinematography and script conjoining to bring it home. Children are survivors, and love springs eternal in their little hearts, but even the young have limits, and sometimes what happens to them is beyond their powers of recovery. For those who bring such harm to these little ones, it would be better for them to have a millstone tied to their neck and be thrown into the sea (Jesus).

I pray for the day when the Jesus-followers of America will be able to separate their faith from their love of country, and to be the best of all patriots, those who can carry on a lover's quarrel with a good nation that can often to terrible things. The illusions of our innocence serve us poorly.

Better to know the truth and then make terrible decisions rather than masking our behavior with religious cant and swaggering pomp.

"Turtles can fly" - no, they can't fly. They die!