War, Inc.

Starring: John Cusack, Hillary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Ben Kingsley

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0884224/

This review contains minor spoilers.

I’ll see pretty much any movie if it has John Cusack in it. I have a severe dislike for horror films and yet I sat down and watched 1408 mostly because he was in it (I admit I was also drawn in because I heard the story was decent, and when a movie has a good enough story and twist I’ll see it regardless of genre, as is evident by my having sat through the first two Saw films. Twice). So I sat down to watch this movie with a decidedly positive predisposition. It also helps that John Cusack is an assassin in this film, a character who he is amazing at playing, and the one I most enjoy seeing him in (see: Grosse Point Blank; oddly another of his movies costarring Dan Aykryod). Now seeing a movie with pretty decent expectations gives me the opportunity to expirience one of my favorite things about film; when a movie is far better than I expected, and War, Inc. did just that.

As with most movies, this one had it’s ups and downs as far as my enjoyment went. It’s a good thing the ups far outweighed the downs (quite the opposite of the Rooster’s song about Nottingham, which I guess is not a useful statement but I couldn’t resist throwing a Robin Hood reference in there). For the first half of the movie I wanted nothing to do with the creator’s paltry attempts at drama and character building through flashbacks. This view changed later on when I realized that as much as they felt out of place in a often over the top satire, they were necessary for later scenes to succeed as well as they do. And as much as I like John Cusack, I hold a similar, but opposite, dislike for Joan. They come as somewhat of a package deal I suppose, him being the package and her being the deal, and she has been decent in some films (Martian Child and her various voice acting work spring to mind) but on the whole I tend to harbor negative feelings for her characters.

The comedy in this film, the majority sprouting from the satire, but the best being the plain goofy scenes, was amazing. I laughed so hard during parts of this movie that I missed dialog because I was replaying the scenes in my head. The scene wherein John leaped over the counter of a Popeye’s at the urging of a worker who has only two voice setting, whisper and yell, was absolutely hilarious and it was at that point that the movie went from generic to great. Another scene that pops to mind is a shot of the three leads standing on a stage wielding weapons, with a wedding dress clad Hillary Duff firing an assault rifle and yelling. It was the icing on a cake made from violence and laughter; delicious.

John Cusack also wrote and produced the film which was part of the reason I enjoyed it so much. He has a great sense of comedy and building up hilarious scenes from seemingly small things. It’s no coincidence that prior to this movie, my three favorite films starring him have also been written by him. I highly recommend checking this movie out, it was hilarious, had great satire, and some amazingly wicked fight scenes (he is an assassin after all) which would rival many big action films.

~ by Hobbes on May 14, 2008.