(Note: Just a plug and an FYI . . . "War, Inc." is being released on DVD July 1, 2008 . . . . Betsy)

http://socialistworker.org/2008/05/20/telling-truths

Column: Anthony Arnove

Telling Truths That Can't Be Said

A look at John Cusack's satire War, Inc., and why we desperately need more commentary like it today.

May 20, 2008

IN THE Orwellian world of U.S. politics, often, it takes artists to say the truth that otherwise can't be said--or heard.

Stanley Kubrick brought home the reality of militarism and the madness of U.S. nuclear doctrine in Dr. Strangelove as no nonfiction work of the time could. Sidney Lumet's Network did the same for the corporate takeover of our culture.

Today, John Cusack's War, Inc. fires a similar shot across the bow of our tortured political discourse.

War, Inc. is a Swiftian allegory of the world not as it might be in some possible future, but as it is today, with a performance from Ben Kingsley as memorable as Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove. (It also features a deconstruction by Hilary Duff of her own fame and our twisted, sexist culture that has to be seen to be believed.)