Pictured: Savage Grace; John and Joan Cusack ; and Marisa Tomei in War, Inc.
The film begins with Tony’s birth in 1946. Barbara’s marriage to Brooks (Stephen Dillane), the Bakelite plastics heir, is a roundelay of social climbing, nightclubbing and various sexual partners—all of which she schedules with a tight smile. A world-weary Brooks says things like, ‘Barbara, don’t be tedious’ but goes along with her demands, rages and smothering of little Tony. The trio jet around the European hotspots as the film jumps from 1959 to 1968, when the family arrives in Mallorca.
Here, the now-grown Tony (Eddie Redmayne) hangs out at the beach with his two comely friends, the luscious Blanca (Elena Anaya) and his pot-dealing lover, Black Jake (Unax Ugalde). Tony brings Blanca home and she quickly understands it’s her task to deflower Tony, thus ‘fixing him,’ but she just as quickly sees that the real power and position lies with Brooks, who takes the bait. Exit Brooks and Blanca, and enter Sam (Hugh Dancy in a highly effective cameo), an effete aesthete who is soon sleeping first with Tony, then Barbara and, before you can say ‘ménage a trois,’ both. But when Sam departs, depression takes over and Barbara tries to kill herself.
Tony now cares for his mother and, in a scene where he applies ointment to her healing wrists as she lolls naked in a tub, it’s apparent that the relationship has become unnaturally intimate. We are meant to infer that the duo have become lovers but, though the movie hints at Tony’s descent into schizophrenia, it’s not implicit until the last scene. This is the infamous afternoon in November of 1972 when the two, now living in London, have sex (Kalin gives us Moore straddling Redmayne), followed by an emotional outburst that ends when Tony stabs Barbara to death and then coolly orders Chinese takeout.
This last sequence is as uncomfortable as one would imagine, but would have had more resonance if we cared even a smidgen for the characters or understood that the behavior on Tony’s part had gone on for years. The performances are excellent, with Moore, one of the movies’ most fearless actors, not hesitating to head emotionally for the deep end. Redmayne holds his own in his underwritten part, while Dillane is droll and appropriately insouciant as the distant father. A tantalizing hint of the father’s repressed gay feelings in a locker-room sequence is left unexplored, as is much else in this chilly yet enthralling movie. Readers of the book, also titled Savage Grace (an excellent read), will have the benefit of getting a fuller story, though Kalin’s stylish film might be more than enough time for most to spend with these disturbing folks.
John Cusack’s new film, War, Inc. (which he co-wrote), is a great political satire—a Dr. Strangelove for the YouTube generation that is bitter, funny and stuffed with telling details about how modern-day warfare has merged with the interests of American corporations. Cusack plays a cynical hitman suddenly having doubts about his choice of profession. He’s assigned by Dan Aykroyd as a former vice president (read: Dick Cheney) to assassinate a key political figure in a mythic Middle East country called Turaqistan (read: Iraq) being run by the Tamerlane Corporation (read: Halliburton).
Cusack’s sister, Joan; Marisa Tomei (the love interest) ; Hilary Duff (playing a trampy pop starlet) ; Ben Kingsley (Cusack’s boss) ; and Montel Williams (no, really) all offer excellent support.
War, Inc. scores so many satirical bullseyes that it nearly trips over its own cleverness and actually, the last quarter of the film, while emotionally satisfying is distinctly at odds with the rest of the acrid picture. War, Inc. plays into every cynical suspicion held by liberals about the war in Iraq and it scores its bitter points while being deeply entertaining and funny as hell—a claim few of the recent spate of Mideast war-themed pictures can make.
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