If it's true, as the showbiz saying goes, that dying is easy and comedy is hard, then political satire is akin to breaking rocks in the hot sun. Just ask Stanley Kubrick. In "War, Inc.," deadpan actor John Cusack does his best to mine sharp polemical material from the rich vein of the Iraq war and the appalling combination of bumbling and malfeasance with which it was launched and executed. He meets with uneven success in a film that, in attempting to ridicule the Bush administration, finally just settles for being ridiculous itself.

Cusack plays Blackwater-esque operative Brand Hauser, who arrives in the ficitonal Turaquistan to off the country's leader, who has had the temerity to take control of one of his own pipelines. Taking his orders from an Ozlike boss, Hauser finds himself in the center of a military-corporate trade show, a burlesque of cynicism, profiteering and pseudo-patriotism.

Marisa Tomei plays a Naomi Klein-like journalist (Cusack was reportedly inspired by one of her articles in the Nation), and Hilary Duff delivers a surprisingly effective portrayal of a Turaqui pop tart. But what might have had the teeth of "Wag the Dog" (let alone "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" or Hunter S. Thompson at his finest) finally loses its bite in taking too many cheap 'n' easy shots. Still, for critics of the war with an appetite for red meat, "War, Inc." will prove filling, if not quite completely nourishing.

-- Ann Hornaday (June 27, 2008)

Contains violence, profanity and brief sexual material.