Hello, reader.  I have a special message, but it’ll be at the end of this review because I don’t want to bury my lead too much.

War!  What’s it good for?  Makin’ money, y’all!  At least, that’s the moral of the 2008 film War, Inc, starring John Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hillary Duff, and many other folks worth watching.  Set in the fictional (wink!) country of Turaqistan, War, Inc. follows the trials and tribulations of a US government hitman as he attempts to kill the new Turaqi president and pretends to rebuild the country even as American tanks cruise the streets.

Cusack comes very close to reprising his role from my beloved Grosse Pointe Blank as he plays an exhausted, traumatized assassin who struggles with his demons and casually kicks the living crap out of his enemies.  He’s sensitive.  He’s deep and complex.  He’s a total bad ass.  He’s a John Cusack character.  Tomei plays a news reporter whose anti-imperialist articles get her shunned by American military and political figures.  Try as she might, she just can’t hate Cusack the way she should, but the story thankfully doesn’t dwell too long on their bizarre romance.  Duff plays an oversexed, oversold pop star from Eastern Europe.  Her acting and singing may leave something to be desired, but if you’re into that kind of thing, she does show her ass off a lot.  Joan Cusack and Dan Aykroyd both give performances that had me hooting with laughter.  Hooting, I say!

Now, for some story.  In the near future (wink!), corporations become more significant on the world stage than nations.  As a matter of fact, the entire invasion, occupation, and rebuilding of Turaqistan by the US was outsourced to a company called Tamerlane.  The CEO of Tamerlane is the ex-vice president of the United States (oh no they didn’t!).  Cusack is sent to the Turaqi capital to kill the new Turaqi president.  His cover is coordinator for a massive trade show aimed at selling off the rights to utilities, construction, and the other lucrative details of rebuilding the country.  When Duff turns up with her entourage and declares that she will be holding her wedding at the trade show, his cover starts to spiral out of control.  He is then torn between Tomei, the reporter he wants but is supposed to hate, and Duff, the pop star he can’t stomach but is supposed to lust after.  Over the course of their interactions, we see glimpses of his past, the true horror of war torn Turaqistan, and the hideous way in which Tamerlane devotes more resources to public relations than to public safety.

In some ways, War, Inc. is a little heavy handed.  It’s my opinion that it’s message is probably really justified, but the viewing does get a little laborious at moments.  In some scenes, the characters simply have so much to say, so much social commentary to get out, that their dialogue gets difficult to discern.  If you can hear it all, I promise that it’s hilarious and insightful.  If you can’t, you might be at a loss until the next explosion interrupts whoever is speaking.  If you’ve seen Grosse Pointe Blank, you’ll feel some deja vu here with the dark comedy sensibility and whole desensitized/way-too-sensitive hero thing that focuses the plot.  Did I mention that Joan Cusack is bloody hilarious?  Unfortunately, the music isn’t quite as good as it was in Grosse Pointe, but that’s alright.  I’m not sure how well the Violent Femmes would pair up with an anti-corporate hegemony film.

So, long story short, if you like fictions that rail against the commodification of basic human needs, or if you like witty dialogue carefully inserted between explosions, or if you just like watching beautiful people in tragicomic circumstances, you will probably enjoy this one.  Just don’t expect a totally happy ending.  I get the feeling that this flick was meant to be a funny Apocalypse Now for the Iraq war.  For my money, it did at least as well as any other.

Now for my message to the reader.  I’ve never really been that comfortable reviewing movies.  Honestly, I’m a literature guy rather than a cinema guy.  For that reason, I almost refrained from doing any movies when I started this column.  One thing I do know about outside all this is martial arts and, to a lesser extent, martial arts films.  To get me back toward more familiar territory for a while, I’m going to focus my movie reviews on martial arts films, probably mostly old kung fu flicks.  This one might go over like a lead balloon, but we’ll never know until we try to fly it.  See this site again in the next couple of weeks for Andrew’s Kung Fu Movie Time.