War Machine

2017’s “War Machine”, directed by David Michôd.

Starring Brad Pitt, Anthony Hayes, John Magaro, Anthony Michael Hall, Ben Kingsley, Emory Cohen, Toper Grace, Alan Ruck, Tilda Swinton, and Meg Tilly.

War movies can be difficult to make in the sense that you really shouldn’t enjoy them- if they accurately depict combat between separate nation states involving people dying honour-less, gruesome deaths, it’s grim entertainment. And if it’s entertaining in a superficial way, it’s flippantly sociopathic and homicidal. Throw in the concept of satire (a la “Dr. Strangelove”), and the waters become even murkier.

Based off of the Michael Hastings novel, “The Operators: The Wild And Terrifying Inside Story Of America’s War In Afghanistan” (itself based off of his Rolling Stone article, “The Runaway General”), we meet Brad Pitt in the role of the eventually disgraced four star NATO General, Stanley McChrystal. He is sent into Afghanistan to settle the region of insurgents, while President Obama orders to withdraw troops against McChrystal’s wishes. He has a small platoon of yes men to stroke his ego and further his goals, all while living a life of rigid consistency and minimal married life that smacks of cognitive dissonance.

“WM” does itself few favours. The clumsy narration by the Rolling Stone journalist character that guides the movie violates the most sacred rule of screenwriting: show, don’t tell. Worse, it also seems confused about if we’re honouring the general, or showing his infamous descent, and also if it’s showing how awful modern warfare is through satire, or celebrating the military movie. While featuring a fantastic field scene involving a soldier clearly suffering from PTSD, the rest of the movie gives us little to do but watch Pitt make some baffling choices as to how to portray McChrystal. Here, he channels his “Inglorious Basterds” military machismo and “Burn After Reading”’s unbridled enthusiasm, with a painfully awkward dose of the most jogging scenes in a movie since “Forrest Gump”. Pitt’s role is propped up by his one note sycophants, leading to a general lack of characters to follow. The afore mentioned PTSD soldier, and Tilda’s Swinton’s journalist character, are notable exceptions- can we watch movies about them instead?

2.5/5

Trailer: Click Here.