War Machine (2017)

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Sumdain x

Sumdain x

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2.50 star(s) Rating: 2.50/5 2 Votes
Title: War Machine

Tagline: We're gonna liberate the sh** out of you.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, War

Director: David Michôd

Cast: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hayes, John Magaro, Anthony Michael Hall, Emory Cohen, Topher Grace, Daniel Betts, Aymen Hamdouchi, RJ Cyler, Alan Ruck, Nicholas Jones, Will Poulter, Keith Stanfield, Sir Ben Kingsley, Meg Tilly, Griffin Dunne, Josh Stewart, Kola Bokinni, Derek Siow, Hopper Jack Penn, Pico Alexander, Scoot McNairy, Justin Rosniak, Paolo Gasparini, Simon Werner, Sian Thomas, Reggie Brown, Chris Lew Kum Hoi, Hassani Shapi, Jean-Pierre Lorit, Gillian Jones, Richard Glover, Ben Peel, Elham Ehsas, Georgina Rylance, Abdul Whahab, Tilda Swinton, Kick Gurry, Rufus Wright, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Mirrah Foulkes, Daniel Wyllie, Josh McConville, Tim Downie, Sean Power, Andrew Byron, Daniel Fritz, Mohammadi Gul, Abdul Salam, Aykut Hilmi, Nezar Alderazi, Orli Shuka, Tara D'Arquian, Russell Crowe

Release: 2017-05-26

Runtime: 123

Plot: A rock star general bent on winning the “impossible” war in Afghanistan takes us inside the complex machinery of modern war. Inspired by a true story.

 
Sumdain x

Sumdain x

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Netflix original, this movie was god damn hilarious. Having worked 4 star adjacent in the past i have never seen a more accurate portrayal of how these people operate.

7.5/10
 
Attog

Attog

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Started out pretty funny but then it ended depressing as fuck. Because it's basically true and there is no way to "win".
 
Heriotze

Heriotze

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This was bad. It felt like a foreign language movie edited by someone who doesn't speak that language, it just had no idea what it wanted to be and takes hard pivots when it decides to try to be something else.

I read another synopsis that decided everyone in this besides Ben Kingsley had no idea that they were in such a bad movie so that's why he decided to just ham it up and give the only good performance. Pitt went the other way and comes off as a complete caricature and Topher Grace is still, unsuccessfully, trying to extend his range beyond Eric Foreman (basically just himself). Everybody else does a decent enough job.

It's a politics movie that's not interesting enough to stand on that and a war movie with no war; it spends 2 hours explaining something that was already known from the opening scenes then acts clever about it
 
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jayrebb

jayrebb

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I was hoping it was a shot at Petraeus or Clark due to the hair style on Pitt,

instead it seems to be an overall commentary and was disappointed.
 
Heriotze

Heriotze

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Sumdain x said:
It was a shot at McCrystal, since his rolling stone article got him fired.
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I thought this was probably my biggest issue with how the whole thing was structured. Not the shot at McCrystal but the whole Rolling Stone part really tonally shifted this into something quite abruptly that felt like it was out of nowhere. The characters just rolled with it but it felt like it turned into a road trip movie with parts that were almost uncomfort humor thrown in with everyone's interactions with Meg Tilly.

The war parts were bookends for this odd lull and then it ended up that the second war part (which actually had a good resolution for what was setup initially) was bookended by meta-politics stuff then by the very end I was just done with this stuttery storytelling. There are two decent movies in this smashed together, hamfistedly, to hammer a point home and neither one ends up being all that good for it.
 
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Zapatta

Zapatta

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Came into thread looking for Black Iron Man, instead was reminded of shitty Netflick whos name I supressed after turning it off 15 mins in.
 
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Conefed

Conefed

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I liked this one a lot, but I'm a sucker for patriotism and good role models. 7/10

I thought they were setting the Afghan guy up for some kind of betrayal[, but investment was only kinda answered./spoiler]
 
mkopec

mkopec

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I didnt like this one, weaksauce.

Brad Pitt was good actor though. that dude can act. sometimes, through the movie, I had to remind myself that it was Brad, lol.
 
Z

Zweischneid

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Heriotze said:
I thought this was probably my biggest issue with how the whole thing was structured. Not the shot at McCrystal but the whole Rolling Stone part really tonally shifted this into something quite abruptly that felt like it was out of nowhere.
Click to expand...


I think there was a switch in the movies roles and conflict compared to the book, which made a lot of those scenes odd.

In the Rolling Stones article/book-that-came-later, McCrystal (which Brad Pitt is, if anonymised) is largely the bad guy for going off on his own, ignoring sensible input from the Ambassador, experts, etc., skipping over the chain of command to talk with the Afghan President, and generally being arrogantly disdainful of non-military people, up to and including President Obama. It's called the "Runaway General" for a reason.

In the movie, not-McCrystal is clearly a much more sympathetic figure. His quirks are portrayed as being grounded in being better informed on whats going on at the ground and his disdain for the Ambassador & Co. is largely portrayed as justified, given that the movie depicts them as mostly aloof idiots and out-of-touch-bureaucrats. He basically get's owned in the movie for letting the reporter join him on a drinking tour.

And to an extend, get's-it-right-military-guy vs. lazy, dumb civilians/bureaucrats is a tried-and-proven Hollywood formula and arguably how most audiences generally expect things to go down in this kind of movie, broadly speaking. But it clearly grates with the source material, which made a case (whether correctly or incorrectly) for this particular case being exactly the other way around.
 
Oldbased

Oldbased

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Need more movies like Fury. Especially if it has Shia getting into the role by pulling out his real teeth on set and not showering for a week until people start spraying him with fabreeze between takes
 
Movie information in first post provided by The Movie Database
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