My apologies if someone has already posted on this movie. War, Inc. is a blast, the most fun I’ve had watching a movie all year. It is an absurdist take (clearly indebted to Dr. Strangelove) on the corporatization of war and nation-building. A fictional Halliburton (the Tamerlane Corporation) has an exclusive contract to rebuild, privatize and generally rape the central asian country of Turaqistan, and every aspect that we have seen in recent years in Iraq is ramped up to 11 to comic effect. The politics of the movie are crude and brutally funny, with moments of real power and poingancy. In particular, a scene in a bombed out town at night, as assorted military contractors and local militias fire blindly at each other, explosions rake the landscape and refugees flee, bring to mind the bridge-building scene in Apocalypse Now.
John Cusak is the corporation’s hit man with a heart of gold, and the movie elicits hysterical performances from Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei and a host of minor characters. The story of redemption for John Cusack is hardly original, but the movie still pulls very few punches, and occasionally hits you right in the gut. The choice of eschewing ernest characters offering their critiques of American imperial power and instead relying upon images and humor makes this even stronger. I suspect that there will be less of this kind of movie in the next couple of years as the afterglow of Obama’s victory lingers. This one is well worth watching, if only as a reminder of the world Obama has inherited.