War Machine
(2017)
(SPOILERS) How many War on Terror movies have to be made –
let alone War on Terror satires – before Hollywood realises it simply
doesn’t have what it takes to interrogate the ongoing charade with any degree
of acumen, diligence or (in this case) wit. This isn’t just true of that
particular ongoing excursion into imperialism, of course, it’s largely the case
with any would-be politically-attuned vehicles (see the recent Our Brand Is Crisis), that go for soft
ineffectuality, or knowing aloofness, when something, anything would be
preferable. Anger’s one mode. Insight’s even better. They’re both absent from War Machine, a fictionalised account the
attempts by General Stanley McChrystal (here as Brad Pitt’s Glen McMahon) to preside
over a turnaround in the US armed forces fortunes in Afghanistan despite the
realisation he’s been sent in to oversee a withdrawal. The result is unfocussed
and rambling, unsure who its targets are or even if it holds a position. Other
than being above it all.
Pitt’s cartoonish performance, all exaggerated posturing and
delivery, has come in for a lot of stick, but that’s only fair in as much as
he’s acting in a different, more interesting movie than the one David Michôd
is making (which Michôd also wrote, based on Michael Hastings’ The Operators). Pitt’s movie, as bold, brazen and as uncompromisingly
unsubtle as its main character, might have fired salvos at all comers, sharing
out versions of the same dumb rhetoric McMahon spouts to parties concerned
while reserving particular ire for the whys and wherefores of the conflict
itself, which go unmentioned (other than some vague headshaking).
As it is, we’re presented with McMahon as a “master of systems organisations” who
refuses to accept that he hasn’t been sent to Afghanistan to win, who chides “Seems to me everyone’s forgetting we’re
fighting a war here” and has designs on bringing the most difficult region
to heel as a signal of his greater intent. Faced with POTUS’ refusal to provide
extra troops and delays on everything he intends to institute (told he will
have to wait while local elections are re-held owing to corruption, he dismisses
such concerns with “How is Washington any
different?”), he goes on 60 Minutes
and creates a political embarrassment for Obama. There’s a certain Catch-22
logic operating here that Pitt probably thought he could tap (and since he’d
had previous success working with Antipodean Andrew Dominik, he probably
thought Michôd’s outsider view would be equally incisive), but the picture
only rarely approaches such areas in an engaged or astute manner.
President Karzai: And what is this new direction?
McMahon: It is most important to me that we build
Afghanistan. Together we build Afghanistan into a free and prosperous
nation. Free from fear and conflict.
President Karzai:
I see, I see. It sounds a lot like the
old direction.
His audience with Ben Kingsley’s West-sanctioned President
Karzai, in which he preaches the new direction for the country, has the right
air of flippancy towards what the military think they’re doing, but a whole
spiel on counter insurgency is subsequently delivered as a dry voiceover
monologue from Scoot McNairy’s (Rolling Stone) journalist Sean Cullen; “The thing about counterinsurgency is that
it doesn’t really work”. He posits that McMahon’s response to this would be
“Cos nobody’s ever done it right”.
This is fertile ground, that insurgents are near impossible
to defeat, but countermoves are equally ineffective, requiring you to convince the
population you’re there here to help, making you part of a popularity contest, along
the way installing a local government, providing security, training up the
local forces so they can provide security to help themselves (or at least try
to) and stimulating the local economy, but it’s too impassive to have any edge
or impact. There’s a scene where McMahon asks why growers are producing heroin
crops, and he is told they can’t produce cotton because it would be in
competition with US product. Michôd gets close to the resource plundering
that is the key to Afghanistan, but then loses his nerve and retreats to the safer
ground of surface, easily mockable military farce.
Hence, McMahon is rebuked with “All the winning we were ever going to do, we did in the first six
months. Since then, we’ve just been making a mess. You’re not here to win.
You’re here to clean up the mess”. The idea that Afghanistan is simply a
disaster is a convenient narrative hiding ulterior goals, though; make the
entire operation look like a botch, and it becomes more palatable. Simply a
mistake. Whether Pitt is aware he has served such an agenda is debatable;
probably not, but then few will likely care either way. I doubt many with the
opportunity to sit through a “free” Brad Pitt movie on Netflix are going to
last the distance; By the Sea has
more attitude.
At one point, Tilda Swinton cameos as a German politician
spelling out what we’ve already had spelled out several times already by our
narrator and in various conversations; it’s overkill. The incessant narration
is a fairly substantial signpost that something is seriously wrong. I love a
good voiceover, but this one is entirely guiding the plot as a substitute for
storytelling. When we need to be told who the central character is over the course
of five, there’s something askew. The flipside is that a similar approach actually
worked for The Big Short (from the
same producers). Of course, there they knew what their goal was.
Part of the problem is that Michôd isn’t a satirist, certainly on
this evidence, and it’s telling that the one scene that lands feels like it has
strayed in from a different movie. Which is also a different movie to the
different movie Pitt thinks he’s in. Maybe Michôd simply felt it wouldn’t be a
War on Terror picture without a scene of conflict. Maybe he thought a scene of
actual combat would provide something sobering, akin to Yossarian’s traumatic memory
in Catch-22. So the scene in which
Lakeith Stanfield’s corporal, taking matters into his own hands when his squad
comes under fire, discovers his mortar bomb has been responsible for killing a
child is strong stuff, but tonally out of place. More on target is McMahon
appearing on the scene and blathering on to the grieving father about helping
to rebuild; Stanfield’s earlier quizzing of the bewildered general about his
nonsense rhetoric is also well done, albeit in both cases we shouldn’t need to
be walked by the hand with this sort of thing. It reflects the essential lack
of faith in the audience throughout.
There are some very good performances in War Machine. Anthony Michael Hall’s a
particular standout as McMahon’s devoted, hot-headed right-hand man Major
General Pulver (loosely based on Mike Flynn). Nicholas Jones, Alan Ruck and
Griffin Dunne are strong as obstructive bureaucrats, and Meg Tilly is excellent
as McMahon’s church mouse wife. And the Russell Crowe cameo (as, essentially,
David Petraeus) as the next guy up to replace McMahon, is an amusing send-off.
But they’re a good cast mostly wasted.
Cullen concludes by asking why the media
didn’t ask bigger questions regarding McMahon’s removal, but damningly, you
could say exactly the same of the movie. What’s the surprise here? That the US military’s
methods are incompetent? That’s not news, and it isn’t terribly rousingly interesting
the way Michôd has told it. Perhaps Hollywood would be better off sticking
with straightforward firefights (American
Sniper, 13 Hours, the forthcoming
Bruckheimer-produced Horse Soldiers),
rather than making a pretence of critiques.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.