J. Scahill: John Cusack’s War: The Actor Battles to Un-Embed Hollywood With His New Film, ‘War, Inc.

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/16/8989/

John Cusack’s War: The Actor Battles to Un-Embed Hollywood With His New Film, ‘War, Inc.’
by Jeremy Scahill

snip//

“War, Inc.” is a radically different kind of movie. In fact, it really defies genre. It is sort of like this generation’s Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and The Wizard of Oz mixed together with the un-embedded reporting of Naomi Klein, spiced up with a dash of South Park. It is a powerful, visionary response to the cheerleading culture of the corporate media and a pliant Hollywood afraid of its own shadow.

On the surface, “War, Inc.” appears to be a spoof of the corporatization of the occupation of Iraq. Cusack plays a hit man, Brand Hauser, deployed to Turaqistan with the mission of killing a Middle Eastern oil baron (named Omar Sharif). Hauser’s employer is a secretive for-profit military corporation run by the former US vice president, played by Dan Aykroyd. We first meet Aykroyd’s character as he sits, pants down, on a toilet seat during a closed-circuit satellite videoconference call to give Hauser his mission. Hauser arrives in the Turaqi capital and heads for the “Emerald City” (read: the Green Zone), where his cover is director of a trade show for the military corporation, Tamerlane, which is basically running the Turaqi occupation. Hauser soon falls for a progressive journalist, played by Marisa Tomei, who is in Turaqistan to investigate Tamerlane, and what follows is an insane ride through Cusack’s interpretation of the radical corporatization of war.

Singer Hilary Duff gives a surprisingly fun performance as a pop star, Yonica Babyyeah, who performs a song in the war zone with the lyrics, “You say you want to invade me, baby/Enslave me, baby.” As Duff delivers the song, she caresses a phallic gas nozzle decorated with diamonds while singing, “I want to blow you….up.” Obviously Cusack and his co-writers, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser (REDS/Bulworth), sought to tap into the extreme nature of the corporatized war and take it to another level, but anyone who thinks the premise behind “War Inc.” is “over-the-top” has not been paying attention to real life.

Cusack, Leyner and Pikser are not predicting the future, they are forcefully–and with dark humor and wit– branding the present for what it is: the Wal-Mart-ization of life (and death) represented in the new US model for waging war. With 630 corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton on the US government payroll in Iraq getting 40% of the more than $2 billion Washington spends every week on the occupation, Cusack’s “futuristic” film is not far from the way things really are. A powerful, for-profit war corporation, run by the former US vice president “owning” the war zone; tanks with NASCAR-like sponsor logos speeding around the streets firing at will; “implanted journalists” watching the war in IMAX theaters in the heavily-fortified “Emerald City” to get “full spectrum sensory reality” while eating popcorn; a secretive “viceroy” running the show from behind a digital curtain are all part of Cusack’s battlefield in the fictitious Turaqistan. But how far are they from the realities of the radically privatized corporate war machine Washington has unleashed on the world?

“War, Inc.” is already an underground cult classic and will likely remain so for years to come. The film is not without its shortcomings–at times it is confusing and drags–but its faults are significantly overshadowed by its many strengths. It also accomplishes the difficult feat of being very entertaining and funny, while delivering a powerful punch of truth. “War, Inc.” is a movie that deserves a much wider viewing than the barons of the film industry are likely to give it. But by filling the theaters in the opening days, people can send a powerful message that there is–and must be–a market for films of conscience.

Visit the official website of “War, Inc.” or John Cusack’s website to view trailers, get info on tickets for the premieres and to read more about the film.


Jeremy Scahill’s New York Times best seller, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, is now available in substantially updated paperback form.

[Hissyspit]

1. kick

[cyclezealot]

2. If only the American people were not burnt out

they would wake up and watch.

[barbtries]

3. i've always liked john cusack

now i love him

[bluesmail]

4. I saw Bulworth 4 times. I loved that movie, by the way, K&R

Knowing somebody from Bulworth helped make War Inc solidifies my belief in it.