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John Cusack Disaster Reaffirms Iraq Films' Special Place in America's Heart
Posted by Defamer Hollywood at 7:20 AM on April 30, 2008
John Cusack's meander through his second-consecutive anti-war film is coming under heavy fire at the Tribeca Film Festival, where War, Inc. bowed this week to the kinds of reviews that made his previous Iraq entry — the $US50,899-grossing Grace is Gone — positively shine in comparison. While he and his agent sift around for a more reliable rom-com follow-up, our preliminary poke through the wreckage yields yet more smouldering evidence that Iraq is officially over as a dramatic subject. We piece together the eyewitness testimony after the jump:
Cusack, in the latest of a seemingly endless (and psychologically curious) string of hitman roles, plays Hauser, a typically troubled assassin whose inner psyche is so dead that he resorts to downing shot glasses of hot sauce in order to feel anything. His latest mission, at the behest of Tamerlane — a Halliburton-type corporation run by a Dick Cheney-like former vice president (Dan Aykroyd) — is to assassinate a Middle Eastern oil minister named Omar Sharif (an example of the film's humour) who is threatening to undercut their plans to build an oil pipeline in the wartorn country of Turaqistan. — Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter
He also encounters a reporter for The Nation (Marisa Tomei!), a Central European pop tart named Yonica Babyyeah (Hillary Duff) who drops a scorpion down her pants and a hysterical double-agent (played by Cusack's real-life sister Joan running the trade show that serves as Cusack's cover — featuring a chorus line of amputees with high-tech prosthetic limbs. And I haven't mentioned Sir Ben Kingsley, sporting another one of his eccentric American accents, as a Big Brother-like character. — Lou Lumenick, NY Post
Films like this and Redacted and Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? exist to make their makers feel good about their own political correctness, and content that their razor-thin world views are accurate and viable, when in fact they represent a tiny fraction of the bigger picture. This is not activism—this is self-congratulation. — Karina Longworth, Spout Blog
It gets worse from there, but again, we'd prefer to think of Cusack as we remember him: a tasteful man whose recent lapses into treacle and trash (Martian Child, John? Really?) warrant a Sure Thing sequel or, better yet, the prompt franchising of Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything Else. It's not like Cameron Crowe couldn't use the boost himself.
[Photo Credit: Getty Images]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
mitchel_stevens
Posted 5:43 AM 30/4/08
wow. took me a second to see that those three grafs were from different places.
frightening that lou and karina are beginning to sound alike. in type.
mitchel_stevens
Benny
Posted 5:34 AM 30/4/08
Cusack is such a mystery to me. At his best he's one of my faves. But boy does he suck hard a lot of the time.
Benny
pureblarney
Posted 5:25 AM 30/4/08
Please don't even mention Lloyd Dobler in this context. It makes my heart sad.
pureblarney
robertmonsters
Posted 6:58 AM 30/4/08
Wasn't Grosse Point Blank the (unofficial sequel to Say Anything? Piven as best bud, loopy-ex girlfriend with scary dad, kickboxing JC, it all kind of adds up....
robertmonsters
Juancho
Posted 6:32 AM 30/4/08
No Still Better Off Dead?
$50k is entering Jessica Simpson territory, Cuse.
Juancho
raincoaster
Posted 7:59 AM 30/4/08
I don't care how hard they suck, I will see them all. I will see the one with both Cusacks TWICE!
raincoaster
Calraigh
Posted 9:24 AM 30/4/08
Yeahhh, I've had cause to re-examine my previous devotion to Cusack's 'oeuvre' and I'm not entirely convinced that he hasn't just been acting like a 'really cool guy' all these years.That's because a 'really cool guy' would not make 'Must Love Dogs', The Martian Child' and say the line in a movie about young Hitler, ''C'mon Hitler, I'll buy you a glass of lemonade.''
Now I loved 'Max', I thought it was sexiest thing Cusack ever did but Jesus CHRIST almighty.What, WHAT, goes through his mind when he reads these scripts?His is truly, a mind of sphinx-like qualities.
Calraigh
hummingpenguin
Posted 9:14 AM 30/4/08
was 1408 so bad? i seem to remember liking him in that. otherwise, yeah, i miss the old JC.
hummingpenguin
Trixie from Toronto
Posted 10:44 AM 30/4/08
@raincoaster: I am so with you on that, peaches. I saw War Inc. and no, it was not great. But it had the odd moment of world-weary Cusack greatness -- just a line here and there, a look, the cock of an eyebrow, a fleeting bit of brilliant dialogue that you knew he wrote -- that made sitting through all the rest quite worth it.
And another weird thing? Hilary Duff was pretty good.
And Calraigh? I have friends who thought the lemonade line was one of the best Cusack lines ever. Go figure!
Trixie from Toronto
Calraigh
Posted 11:42 AM 30/4/08
@Trixie from Toronto: No, ''the best thing ever''? Seriously?To be honest,it never actually bothered me all that much until I'd watched Max for maybe the 847th time and then I was like, 'hang on, what the...!''Yeah, I'm sharp like that.
I dunno, I'm torn.I haven't watched it in about 3 years so maybe I'll watch it again and then all of this guff I'm spouting will be redundant and I'll want to have his children again.Sadly, he will still not want to have mine.Oh well...
Calraigh
Benny
Posted 2:43 PM 30/4/08
I actually dreamed last night that I had a childish ghostbusters themed birthday party in a nature park, and that John Cusack showed up and half heartedly acted out a party play as one of the ghostbusters with Harold Ramis and Dan Ackroyd. Far from being amazing, it was oddly depressing in tone.
I am certain it was a metaphor for the death of my youthful idealism, and that Cusack's place in it had a lot to do with where he started and where he's ended up.
Benny
cinerama
Posted 3:30 PM 30/4/08
If he wants to play a hitman so badly, why can't we have that long-rumored Grosse Pointe Blank sequel already?
cinerama
Trixie from Toronto
Posted 9:13 AM 1/5/08
@cinerama: Maybe Minnie wouldn't do it since apparently he broke her heart too, right before Matt Daymon did.
Trixie from Toronto