A Tale of Two Satires.

Over the weekend, I rented a slew of movies for me and my family. (It beat contending with the drunks and nutjobs on the road for a meaningless New Year’s celebration. When we rent movies, we get some for my daughter that we can watch as “family fare,” one that I can enjoy as a “guy thing” (in this case, Death Race), and a couple that Mrs. Digital and I can enjoy when our daughter is asleep. I chose a couple that looked promising, War, Inc. with John Cusack, and the Cohen Brothers Burn After Reading. Being a card-carrying conservative, I’m used to having to put up with movies that espouse a liberal/secular/progressive point of view, and movies that hit you over the head with their liberal’s-eye view of the world. I’m resigned to having to filter out the liberal subtexts, and laugh off the obvious, ham-handed attempts to make conservatives look stupid/incompetent/lazy/criminal. It’s not fair. I don’t like it. And I wish they wouldn’t do it. But I’m resigned to it. Having said all that, allow me to compare and contrast these two satirical flicks for your edification.

Burn After Reading is the latest opus from the Cohen Brothers, the guys behind classics such as O Brother Where Art Thou, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, and The Big Lebowski., and movies that run out of steam in search of an ending (No Country for Old Men). The movie tells the story of a hapless CIA employee who quit rather than be demoted, who seeks to write a memoir to make a buck and exact his revenge, a Lothario sleeping with CIA guy’s wife, a personal trainer wanting to find funding for cosmetic surgeries (also sleeping with the Lothario) and a male bimbo trainer, a lovelorn gym manager, pining for the female personal trainer, and various assorted significant others, CIA operatives, and minor cast members. Like most of the Cohen’s recent work, Burn After Reading tends to be somewhat unfocused, and totally lacking in sympathetic characters. As satire, it comes up short as well, as it fails to connect on any level other than “can you believe that the world/USA/Government is so screwed up to let this kind of thing happen?”

War, Inc. is more focused, more satirical, and in many ways, a better film than Burn After Reading. If you can get around the constant drumbeat of “Bush is Evil,” “Cheney is Satan,” and “Haliburton is behind the war to profit from it,” the film is pretty funny. To a point. Cusack (as star, producer, and co-writer) is his usual persona – morally conflicted, basically decent, sarcastic, unassumingly competent. Then there’s Hillary Duff. I’m sure her handlers were thinking, “let’s change your PopTart image completely…we’ll put you in a role where you’re an over-sexed, talentless, teeny-bopper who swears like a sailor and attempts to seduce every man she sees.” Not a good idea. They could have taken Duff from PopTartlet to, say, romantic lead in a flick where she has an adult relationship. They could have had her sing some more adult songs…perhaps have her go Norah Jones and issue a CD of jazz standards. But going from goody-two-shoes to Slutzilla in one step is too big a chasm to bridge. The effect was not to “reinvent” her, but instead to simply debase and destroy everything she stood for.

If I had to recommend one of the flicks, I’d go with War, Inc., simply because it had focus and at least one character (Cusack’s) worth rooting for. Both movies would have been greatly improved, had they not taken the easy way out by relying on so many cheap shots at conservatives. As for Burn After Reading, I’d almost (but not quite) rename it Burn Before Watching, as it left me wondering if the Brothers Cohen have forgotten how to write a film that has both a point – and an ending.