Aiming to be the Dr. Strangelove of the new millennium is an admirable goal. Despite the abundance of fodder the current American administration has provided, good satires are few and far between. The last film to strike a memorable balance between belly laughs and social critique was 2006’s vastly underrated Idiocracy, and that was more a shot at society in general than a particular political regime.
So, good on John Cusack for trying. War Inc., which Cusack co-wrote, co-produced and stars in, aims to point out all the evils of the military industrial complex, mega-corporations and popular culture in general by wrapping its messages in an occasionally zany, quasi-futuristic romp. The result, though, is something like a Zucker brothers comedy if you replaced the whimsy with righteous indignation.
The film finds Cusack reprising his hit-man role from Grosse Pointe Blank (well, not exactly — War Inc. is more of a spiritual sequel than a continuation of that movie), this time assigned to assassinate the leader of the desert nation of Turaqistan. To avoid detection, Cusack poses as the organizer of multinational arms manufacturer Tamerlane’s Turaqi trade show — Tamerlane being a Haliburton analogue run by the former vice president of the United States of America (Dan Akroyd). Wasting no time, the film quickly sets up a slew of heavy-handed sight gags at the trade show, each one blatantly constructed to show the hypocrisy involved in granting reconstruction contracts to the same companies that cause destruction in the first place. Like a lecture with Naomi Klein dressed in a clown suit, the humour is clearly secondary.
In its zeal to subvert North America’s mindset, War, Inc. misses out on what makes its two most obvious predecessors — Grosse Pointe Blank and Dr. Strangelove — so successful. In the former, it’s the unlikely warmth that emerges from the story of a hit man having an existential breakdown. In the latter, it’s the human element that grounds the film. Sure, things get out of hand in Strangelove’s world, but its characters feel like far more than analogues of the various symptoms of society’s diseases. Hillary Duff’s War, Inc. role, on the other hand, is little more than a depiction of pop star excess and creepy sexuality — and aside from Cusack and love interest Marisa Tomei, few characters are given any more thought.
Even if you completely agree with its politics, it’s hard to drag much enjoyment out of War, Inc. Bitter, angry polemics rarely leave audiences with smiles on their face. In putting the priority on the film’s message, Cusack and company forget that the most important element of a comedy is, well, comedy.
