War, Inc.

Review In a Hurry: John Cusack stars and cowrites this satire, ostensibly about the next war, a wholly outsourced one, that unfortunately can't even find anything new to say about the present conflict.

The Bigger Picture: This dog doesn't do enough wagging. War, Inc. follows the travails of Brand Hauser (a spiritual successor to Cusack's Martin Blank from Grosse Point Blank), a corporate assassin dropped into the mildly fictional country of Turaqistan to eliminate an inconvenient politician. Since his cover also requires him to stage-manage a trade show and the sham wedding of a tarted-up pop starlet (an unrecognizable Hilary Duff), Hauser would have his hands full even without the bombings, the nosy left-wing reporter (Marisa Tomei) and a suddenly resurgent conscience.

This makes War, Inc. a busy little picture; sadly, it's one that's too often reaching for the absurd, instead coming up with the merely inane. The notion of a commercialized, corporately subsidized war, which presents the most interesting possibilities, doesn't really get fleshed out beyond someone's bright idea to put billboards on tanks, which is a little more obvious than any "subversive" film can afford to be.

There's also a depressing lack of consistency, surprising given the remarkable smoothness of Grosse Point Blank. Chaotic though the world of War, Inc. might be, one could at least hope the characters would all appear to be from the same universe, much less planet. This general muddiness means Cusack's road to Damascus moment isn't connected to any particular event. Which would be a waste of his performance if he hadn't already given it 10 years ago anyway; as it is, it's just one more fizzle in a film that wants to be explosive, but can't keep its powder dry.

The 180—a Second Opinion: Plenty of sketch-quality funny moments and a few cockeyed touches here and there (Cusack uses an OnStar-like service as mobile psychotherapy, for example) ensure that War, Inc. is at least a watchable failure.