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From Newsday

'War Inc.'

Rating:

JOHN ANDERSON
May 23, 2008

This John Cusack-driven exercise in scorched-earth political comedy is neither as dark nor as timely as intended, and certainly not as funny: Written by Cusack, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser, it takes place in the fictional Turaqistan, where corporate assassin Brand Hauser (Cusack) has come to kill the oil minister.

This gets him entangled with a beautiful journalist ( Marisa Tomei), a spoiled Turaqi pop star named Yonica Babyyeah ( Hilary Duff), all the while being directed by a Dick Cheney manque played by Dan Aykroyd. The story of the first totally outsourced war, this Joshua Seftel-directed farce is a "Wag the Dog"-style satire-as-expose. Unlike that prescient comedy, however, it feels like its time has either come, gone, or we're in the middle of it. Too close for parody, in other words.

WAR INC. (R) With Joan Cusack, Ben Kingsley. 1:46 (adult content, vulgarity, violence). At the Angelika Film Center, Manhattan.

Related topic galleries: Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Manhattan (New York City), Dan Aykroyd, John Anderson, Dick Cheney

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.

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