John Cusack, his sister Joan and Dan Aykroyd embroiled in a tale of hitmen, the arms trade and America’s pursuit of the world's natural resources? It’s Grosse Point Blank meets Syriana!
 
Then again, once you throw in a mismatched romance, street bombings and a hefty dose of Big Brother-ish futurism, it's more like Brazil meets The Kingdom.
 
But actually the hyperactive enigma that is War, Inc most closely resembles Richard 'Donnie Darko' Kelly's overly ambitious Southland Tales. Make of that what you will.
 
Cusack (John) plays Hauser, a lethal weapon in the already considerable armoury of arms-dealing, planet-raping megacorp Tamerlane (a thinly disguised facsimile of American behemoth Halliburton).
 
Owned by an ex-vice president (Aykroyd), the company has its greedy eye on the gas reserves of the central Asian tinderbox of Turaquistan. Tamerlane's private army already patrols the unsafe streets.
 
Naturally, there is much capitalist interest in the region. Hauser's job is to remove the competition, as represented by Middle Eastern oil minister Omar Sharif (no, not the one who knew Lawrence of Arabia).
 
Using the country's annual trade fair as a front, Hauser wants to be in and out of the hellhole sharpish. Unfortunately, Tomei's fetching yet nosy reporter Natalie Hegalhuzan - gezundheit! - makes his business her business.
 
While dodging Natalie's questions and stray bullets, Hauser somehow finds himself orchestrating a wedding between the Turaqi ruler's son and Yonica Babyyeah (Duff), the country's bad girl pop idol (sample lyric: "I wanna blow you, blow you, blow you... UP!").
 
As with most movie hitmen, Hauser is tormented by his past. Hence his addiction to Tabasco sauce (to relieve the numbness inside).
 
Numerous flashbacks reveal his state of mind and his unhealthy working relationship with an equally shady Tamerlane operative (Kingsley with best Southern drawl).
 
This is crazy. But that’s the point. Where some war satires work on stealth – such as Barry Levinson’s Wag The Dog – War, Inc has all the subtlety and aim of Lily Allen with an Uzi.
 
Any film that presents a chorus line of girls with prosthetic legs and leaves Sir Ben Kingsley for dead in a dustbin wagon makes you wonder what the writers were smoking.
 
Cusack is one of those writers, yet despite his own frantic plotting, he and Tomei form a calm eye in the hurricane. And while it’s hardly a stretch for Duff to play a coddled pop idol, she’s surprisingly good.

Elliott Noble