War Machine | Little White Lies

War Machine

26 May 2017 / Released: 26 May 2017

Words by William Carroll

Directed by David Michôd

Starring Anthony Hayes, Brad Pitt, and John Magaro

Two soldiers in camouflage uniforms standing in a room, one gesturing with his hand.
Two soldiers in camouflage uniforms standing in a room, one gesturing with his hand.
4

Anticipation.

Animal Kingdom and The Rover both showcased a director with huge talent.

3

Enjoyment.

The cogs are a little rusty here.

3

In Retrospect.

An uneven satire boosted by a larger-than-life performance from Brad Pitt.

David Michôd and Brad Pitt serve up a fas­ci­nat­ing but uneven satire of America’s mil­i­tary might.

Satiris­ing Amer­i­can mil­i­tarism has almost become a nation­al pas­time, and nowhere is this more appar­ent than cin­e­ma. Pick­ing apart the hubris of past admin­is­tra­tions and hold­ing them account­able has been the objec­tive of every­one from Stan­ley Kubrick to Matt Stone and Trey Park­er, with films like Full Met­al Jack­et and Team Amer­i­ca: World Police tak­ing aim at Amer­i­can for­eign policy.

David Michôd’s new film, War Machine, a Net­flix Orig­i­nal with Brad Pitt in the lead, con­tin­ues this tra­di­tion while mark­ing a shift in tone from the writer/director’s pre­vi­ous fea­tures, Ani­mal King­dom and The Rover. In exam­in­ing the com­plex and often calami­tous War in Afghanistan, Michôd doesn’t shy away from this par­tic­u­lar thorn in America’s side but instead grabs it with his teeth and pulls it clean out.

Fol­low­ing the fall from grace of Gen Glen McMa­hon (the fic­tion­al coun­ter­part of Gen Stan­ley McChrys­tal, played by Pitt), War Machine details the unyield­ing belief among suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions that the so-called War on Ter­ror could be won, despite all evi­dence to the con­trary. McMa­hon is sent to Afghanistan, with an entourage of loy­al advi­sors and offi­cers in tow, to stick a prover­bial cher­ry bomb up the sta­tioned regiment’s rear end. Let’s go win this thing,” he declares ear­ly on. The hearts and minds of the Afghani peo­ple are not his to be won, how­ev­er, a fact which Michôd swift­ly brings to the fore. Such is the blind hypocrisy of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­tics, the only thing McMa­hon advances is the nag­ging feel­ing that his best years are behind him.

McMa­hon is a sim­ple man who believes in sim­ple things. He believes in the impor­tance of run­ning sev­en miles each day. He believes in his uni­form and the code of hon­our it rep­re­sents. He believes in humil­i­ty, but also in keep­ing the four stars on his shoul­ders vis­i­ble at all times. Most impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, he believes that Amer­i­ca can win this war. The real­i­ty is that men like Glen McMa­hon often seize their oppor­tu­ni­ty for glo­ry at the detri­ment of the wider cause. War Machine takes this endur­ing mil­i­tary fig­ure and empha­sis­es just how dam­ag­ing ego can be.

Pitt gives a sin­gu­lar per­for­mance here, nev­er drop­ping the gri­mace on his face or los­ing his strange walk-jog gait. Through all his man­nered brava­do, though, Pitt strug­gles to bring out the nuanced anx­i­ety of a man who’s eye­ing fail­ure and refus­ing to blink. It’s Meg Tilly as McMahon’s wife Jean­nie, a woman he has been mar­ried to for 30 years but rarely sees, who ulti­mate­ly expos­es the cracks in her husbands’s all-Amer­i­can exterior.

Oth­er cameo roles include Ben Kings­ley as Pres­i­dent Hamid Karzai, a man intro­duced strug­gling to set up a Blu-ray play­er and lat­er seen in hys­ter­ics watch­ing Dumb and Dumb­er. Til­da Swin­ton appears briefly as a Ger­man bureau­crat, and it is she who best vocalis­es the film’s cen­tral mes­sage: Gen­er­al, you have a fetish for com­ple­tion. To make your moment glorious.”

Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and his­to­ri­an David Hal­ber­stam famous­ly put for­ward his quag­mire the­o­ry’ at the height of the Viet­nam War, sug­gest­ing that each sub­se­quent admin­is­tra­tion could only sink deep­er into the metaphor­i­cal mire. Michôd’s film trans­pos­es this the­o­ry onto the Mid­dle-East­ern con­flict, plac­ing McMa­hon as the lone sink­ing ship upon its strange tide. It’s an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive on America’s mil­i­tary pres­ence over­seas, but far from a per­fect satire.

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