War, Inc.Movie Reviews

Poster art for "War, Inc."

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Avg. Critic Score: 37 out of 100 Generally unfavorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
15 Iffy for 15+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 63
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Screwball, vaguely futuristic political satires are a rare hybrid, and War, Inc. is an intriguing, if flawed, example. Read full review

  • 60
    Los Angeles Times | Carina Chocano

    Somehow, what starts as a series of cheap shots in a barrel develops into something more, thanks largely to warm, engaging performances by Cusack and Tomei. War, Inc. is both right-on and somehow off, but it gets points for trying. Read full review

  • 50
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    A brave and ambitious but chaotic attempt at political satire. Read full review

  • 40
    The Hollywood Reporter | Frank Scheck

    The ambitions and intentions of War, Inc., co-written by and starring John Cusack, are laudable, but the film is a nearly complete misfire. Read full review

  • 40
    Variety |

    A blackly comic take on the first totally outsourced war? We're too close to being in one right now, which makes this John Cusack vehicle too close for comfort. It's also so close to being funny you can just about taste it -- just about. Read full review

  • 38
    Boston Globe | Ty Burr

    All that's missing is coherence. Call it Blunderbuss Satire. Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post | Ann Hornaday

    A film that, in attempting to ridicule the Bush administration, finally just settles for being ridiculous itself. Read full review

  • 30
    The New York Times | Stephen Holden

    War, Inc. is gonzo moviemaking with a bleeding heart. A satirical farce that wants to be "Dr. Strangelove" for the age of terrorism, it is a zany, nihilistic free-for-all that goes soft. Read full review

  • 25
    San Francisco Chronicle |

    Misfires so severely that even the clever details get obliterated in the resulting mess. Read full review

  • 20
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    Sorry excuse for political satire. Read full review

View more reviews for War, Inc. on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 15+ Capitalism takes a hit in dark, uneven war satire.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that although this film is technically a comedy, it's a dark one, and there's plenty of violence -- including gory fights and assassinations and people (including unarmed civilians) dying in bloody gunfire. Swear words also fly like shrapnel. Former tween star Hilary Duff plays a singer who sells her sexed-up image to the masses, dressing, singing and behaving (in her own words) like a "whore." The film satirizes giant companies that, with Washington D.C. firmly in their pockets, launch and manage an Iraq-style war purely for profit, with a mindless media repeating their lies about "freedom" and making the world a safer place. Soldiers (who are for-hire militia members, rather than U.S. Army troops) are portrayed as violent and drugged-up.
  • Families can talk about the film's politics. Do you think the filmmakers have a specific political agenda? What's your opinion on the topics they satirize in this movie? Whether you agree or disagree, you can at least discuss the surreal level of the satire. It's the same type of exaggeration found in classic books that a lot of people today mistake for mere fairy tales -- including Gulliver's Travels, The Wizard of Oz, and The Adventures of Pinocchio. What larger messages were those stories conveying within their fantasy adventures?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: No particularly admirable characters. The lethal hired-killer hero says he went into assassination (originally for the CIA) because he thought the enemies would be bad guys, but they turned out to be innocent dissidents. He ultimately rebels, both against the U.S. government and against his corporate masters, but it's still violent. A spoiled young singer is a self-described "whore," even though viewers are asked to believe in her vulnerability and innocence underneath the sleaze. Though an Arab/Muslim land is being occupied in the war, viewers hear almost nothing about their true culture -- just superficial costumes, music, and accents. Evil-businessman caricatures and crazed-goon soldiers also prevail.
What to watch for
  • violence false4 Violence: Lots of shooting, both in close-up execution-style assassinations and crowds being riddled with bullets on the battlefield. Sometimes bullets are even sprayed at civilians for "laughs." Many bomb/grenade/missile explosions. Hand-to-hand combat, martial-arts style fighting, and one character killed with a spike through the head (after his finger is bitten off). A quadriplegic is tortured with hot sauce in the eyes. A threatened decapitation.
  • sex false3 Sex: No nudity, but much talk, mostly about the character of a young pop princess with Britney Spears attributes. She calls herself a "whore," dresses in revealing outfits, puts a live scorpion in her panties (writhing lasciviously as a boyfriend obligingly tries to remove it), and tries to seduce the much-older main character. There's talk of her making a possible sex video.
  • language false4 Language: Many uses of "f--k," "s--t," "bitch," and the like.
  • consumerism false4 Consumerism: As part of their attempts to satirize the market economy, the filmmakers wallpaper scenes with billboards, URLs, and corporate logos and pay lip service to well-known fast-food chains and products. Of course, these in-your-face ads are meant to be distasteful rather than effective.
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Plenty of smoking, social drinking, and drunkenness. Hints that the Tamerlane soldiers are kept wired and violent through drugs.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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