Critic Reviews

It's a bewildering mix of very smart and very dumb, but the cast, which also features a hilarious Joan Cusack, Ben Kingsley, Marisa Tomei, Dan Aykroyd as the Cheney-esque ex-vice president, and Hilary Duff as a Turaqistan airhead pop star, is tiptop.

Like so many satires in the Strangelove mold, this never comes close to working as a story, but its lampoon of U.S. imperialism and military privatization is so bracingly obnoxious I didn't really care.

Comes up with some decent jokes, including a talking car-based GPS system which doubles as a therapist, and a suggestive Yonica number titled "I Want to Blow You Up," but fails to surround them with a compelling story or characters who rise above the level of cliche.

Screwball, vaguely futuristic political satires are a rare hybrid, and War, Inc. is an intriguing, if flawed, example.

This script bumps along, good ideas jostling with weak, derivative ones, and Seftel doesn't seem to know which way he wants to handle the material. Also, with Cusack playing yet another soul-fried wiseacre running on emotional autopilot, the piece doesn't have much of an engine.

Somehow, what starts as a series of cheap shots in a barrel develops into something more, thanks largely to warm, engaging performances by Cusack and Tomei. War, Inc. is both right-on and somehow off, but it gets points for trying.

The trouble with this satirical take US involvement in Iraq, penned by Mark Leyner, John Cusack and Jeremy Pikser, is that the real thing is equally absurd and only marginally less funny.

Its comedy too often blunders into meaningless slapstick, with bombs and bloodshed replacing pratfalls and pies in the face.

A brave and ambitious but chaotic attempt at political satire.

The ambitions and intentions of War, Inc., co-written by and starring John Cusack, are laudable, but the film is a nearly complete misfire.