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War, Inc.
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - First Look Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Noor Razzak (18th November 2008). |
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The Film
 Satire can be a difficult thing to pull off, there are many that work "Dr. Stragelove" (1964) is the best example I can think of as is "Thank You For Smoking" (2005)... and for every satire that hits the mark, there are probably many that miss. "War, Inc." is one of those that misses the mark. "War, Inc." is an ambitious effort; to satirize the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney, the state of the teen-pop idols is also thrown in... and what we get is a near-futuristic jumble of assassins, war profiteers, a hit job, and also a sexed-up teen pop superstar's wedding... why? At this point it doesn't really matter anyway. We've seen and heard all there is about the war in Iraq, the WMD's or lack thereof, the illegal nature of the war, the profiteering by major corporations with ties to the administrations, blah, bah, it's old hat now and doesn't shock anymore. But the purpose of "War, Inc." isn't to shock it's to generate laughs, but those laughs are few and far between. And the jumble of 'topics' to satirize feels like just that; a jumble. For a satire to be funny, it needs to be both topical and smart and while the film certainly is topical, there isn't anything smart about it, the only things keeping this sinking ship afloat is John Cusack, who delivers a wonderfully sedated yet quirky performances as our hero, or anti-hero for that matter, the hitman Brand Hauser. Cusack is endlessly entertaining but that's about it, there wasn't anyone else in this film worth paying attention to. Even Ben Kingsley is wasted in this, with little to do. Dan Aykroyd is annoying at best, and pop-star Hilary Duff basically plays the opposite of herself in a role that could easily be played by just about any other pop-star-come-sex-pot... the accent, however, was grating and wholly unconvincing... what where they thinking? It's like a bad impression of a Middle Eastern person (at least I think that's what she was going for). I guess I should comment on the plot, the film is set in war torn Turaqistan (basically Iraq), it's an occupied by Tamerlane, an American corporation run by the former U.S. Vice President (Aykroyd). The company want to monopolise the oil opportunities, a hit man (Cusack) is contracted to kill the oil minister... so posing as a trade show organizer, who has to deal with organizing the wedding of pop star Yonica (Duff) while keeping a reporter (Marisa Tomei) under his thumb. While there's a lot of elements the filmmaker's attempt to juggle, it's never confusing, which I suppose is another saving grace. This film could have easily veered into complex territories which would have been hard to recover from. Now, with the simplicity of it all, you'd think it'd be easy to generate the funnies required in order to see this film pay off... but everything seems forced, dialogue feels unrealistic and the satire is just plain average at best. I really wanted to love "War, Inc." but I never got into it, right from the start I could tell this would be a trying experience and I wasn't wrong. It's a film that needs to have been given to a better filmmaker with the sense to commission some re-writes.
Video
Presented in the film's original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 in high-definition 1080p 24/fps and has been mastered with VC-1 compression. The HD image is fairly average, nothing special to swoon over. The image is sharp but there are soft shots scattered throughout, the image features some nice detail but looks flat and uninteresting. I was happy to see that the image is clean and crisp without any print damage and that is expected considering it's a recent film. Colors appear muted and don't pop or appear vivid, blacks are deep and skin tones appear natural. Overall it's an good transfer that just doesn't really impress though.
Audio
There's an English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track presented in 48kHz/24-bit as well as an English DTS 5.1 track and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its TrueHD track. The track fares better than the image. The audio is excellent, with crisp and distortion free dialogue, ambiance is excellent and feels natural, the aggressive elements come alive and make good use of the surround channels. The film's score also adds to the depth of the audio, which is consistent. It's not a powerhouse sound mix, but it works for the film and does a decent job of immersing the viewer. Optional subtitles are included in English for the hearing impaired and Spanish.
Extras
The only extras that First Look saw fit to put on this disc is the film's theatrical trailer which runs for 1 minute 55 seconds and a collection of bonus trailers for: - "The Contract" which runs for 2 minutes 1 second. - "Meet Bill" which runs for 2 minutes 34 seconds. - "Blood Brothers" which runs for 52 seconds. - "King of California" which runs for 2 minutes 23 seconds. - "The Amateurs" which runs for 1 minute 57 seconds. - "Player 5150" which runs for 52 seconds. - "Jack and Jill vs. the World" which runs for 54 seconds. - "Day of the Dead" which runs for 1 minute 46 seconds.
Overall
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