War, Inc is a debacle. Starring, co-written and produced by John Cusack, it’s an impotent, cheap-looking political satire that longs for relevance, but feels years stale. (It has, in fact, been around for awhile––it was once titled Brand Hauser, it went into production in fall 2006, it was rumored to have been set up for premiere slots at both Toronto 2007 and Sundance 2008, neither of which, for whatever reason, ever happened.) It’s a sign that Hollywood filmmaking about the current war and its associated politics has fatally passed over from merely irrelevant preaching to the choir, to a kind of solipsistic naivete that should make anyone with an intellectually-rooted anti-war position feel embarrassed to have their politics associated with it. War, Inc personally makes me want to put my head in my hands in shame. The Left deserves to be mocked as much as the Neo-Cons, but nobody deserves to have their reputations sullied by indefensible garbage like this.

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