War Machine
Director - David Michod
Writer - David Michod
Starring - Brad Pitt, Anthony Michael Hall, Topher Grace, John Magaro, Emory Cohen, Scoot McNairy
"It's considered, in our culture, a very bad thing to fuck your own mother."
Netflix invested $60 million in this movie. They went out and got a megastar for it. They have promoted the shit out of it, especially compared to the previous movies I've reviewed here. It's got a killer premise: satirical look at the failures of the War in Afghanistan focused on a general stubbornly attempting to make the US plan work. It's got a great cast. In addition to the above names the following people make appearances; Ben Kingsley, Tilda Swinton, Will Poulter, Keith Stanfield, RJ Cyler, Meg Tilly and Josh Stewart. I think you can guess the overall quality of the this film merely by the way I listed all these facts.
War Machine introduces us to our main character, General Glenn McMahon (Pitt), by showing him literally sitting on a toilet taking a shit. We are then treated to a generic montage of his career with a narrator listlessly listing off his education and achievements while we are treated to clips of these events occurring. This is our first indication that maybe, just maybe, David Michod, who's previous directorial efforts are an Australian family crime saga (Animal Kingdom) and an Australian post-apocalyptic revenge film (The Rover), isn't the best choice to make an American war satire. This is furthered reinforced with the montage introducing McMahon's crew which is a complete montage of the narrator telling us every person's defining character traits, maybe with some accompanying clips to back up that fact.
Well luckily if your writer / director is completely out of his element a premise this great could potentially get by with a slew of great performances top-to-bottom from the cast and this cast certainly has the pedigree to do that. I now implore you to look at the header image again. That is Brad Pitt looking at a sunset contemplating the war and that is the face he chose to make and, this may sound a little unbelievable, but it might also be his most believable face in the entire film. Yes, it's a satire but Pitt's performance is as if he planned out a bunch of crazy mannerisms and an accent that make his Inglourious Basterds accent sound normal based solely on the fact that he was starring in a satire, read the script, saw it wasn't as broad as he had planned, and then didn't change a thing. I almost recommend watching this movie just to watch his hands. It's ridiculous.
The rest of the cast isn't nearly as bad as Pitt but nobody produces anything close to their best work. Ben Kingsley's Hamid Karzai is an affable dofus of an Afghan president. Anthony Michael Hall plays the incredibly loyal Greg Pulver who responds to any sort of criticism of McMahon with a spitting rage. Tilda Swinton's German reporter does a solid job playing the very obvious, film thesis questions at McMahon clouding him with a self doubt and despair that lasts until the next scene. Scoot McNairy does a solid job with a character who is a complete mess. Not in a character standpoint though. The Rolling Stone reporter he plays is consistent and is generally well drawn but the role he plays in the story is a complete mess.
McNairy is the narrator of the story. He opens the film, introduces the characters and chimes in at various points throughout the film. About halfway through the movie he is physically introduced to the story and it feels completely inorganic and jarring. This is to say nothing about the nature of his narration. It is completely at odds with the story and represents the complete failure of direction from Michod. With the narration removed the film plays as a completely straight war movie, albeit one with some hacky jokes thrown in and starring a man with some sort of mental condition. The narration provides 95% of the satire in the film but suffers from shouldering that much of the load. It isn't funny, or even mildly amusing, and generally acts as a bad version of Ron Howard's narrator from Arrested Development pointing out things that the characters are doing are just wrong.
War Machine represents one of Netflix's biggest attempts at launching a big hit in it's original films but is mostly a complete failure. For being a complete mess it is occasionally good and insightful, never more so than the final minutes which also features a cameo appearance by another movie star that is the best performance in the movie. The final minutes of the film provide the great satire that was largely missing in the preceding two hours and is actually good enough to partially redeem the film. The American war effort in the Middle East during the Bush and Obama administrations is a potential goldmine for satirical filmmakers and I see why everybody involved wanted to make this movie. This material just needed to be in better hands and I am left still waiting for the great movie I know is possible from this material.
Schurmann Score - 5/10
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