Three new Insider pieces for you to check out this week: scouting notes on Yu Darvish, more notes on Aaron Nola and some young Phillies hitters, and my annual look at players I was wrong about.
War Machine, released briefly to theaters this spring but residing in perpetuity on Netflix, is a thinly fictionalized adaptation of Michael Hastings’ non-fiction book The Operators, itself an expasion of Hastings’ infamous Rolling Stone article that led to the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal from his post as Commander of the coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan in 2010. It is a decidedly unflattering depiction of just about everything and everyone involved in the endless war against the Taleban, although it succeeds more in its portrayal of individual foibles than as an indictment of the war effort as a whole, laying more on the comic end of the scale than on the satirical side.
Brad Pitt stars as General Glen McMahon, the movie’s pseudonym for the McChrystal character, a tough-talkin’, f-bomb-droppin’, let’s-go-kick-some-terrorist-ass general brought in to replace the last let’s-go-kick-some-terrorist-ass general who couldn’t win the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It appears that this is what McChrystal was really like, although he feels like a walking cliché, a Hollywood-ized representation of what a no-nonsense military leader should look, act, and talk like. He comes to the coalition with his group of acolytes and toadies, including the rah-rah Major General (based on Michael Flynn) played hilariously by Anthony Michael Hall, who largely cheer him on or at least avoid contradicting him, and has somewhat predictable conflicts with American diplomats, notably Karl Eikenberry stand-in Pat McKinnon, played by Alan Ruck (whom you know as Cameron Frye). McChrystal comes across as well-intentioned but largely naive about how unwinnable the conflict really is, although he does have moments of clarity – like the talk he gives to the European Parliament where he explains how killing insurgents likely creates more insurgents in the long run – amidst the standard military maneuvers.
Pitt seems so focused here on doing his impression of McChrystal that any nuance in the character is lost. The portrayal is all accent, facial expressions, and gait – his jogging scenes are just strange, as it seems impossible that Pitt could appear that unathletic – and lacks any depth, which is shocking because Pitt is capable of so much more. His performance is indicative of the misuse of so many talented actors in two-dimensional roles here – Ben Kingsley as the drug-addled, feckless President Karzai; Topher Grace as McMahon’s “civilian media adviser,” who sets up the ill-fated Rolling Stone article; Meg Tilly, looking disturbingly old in short grey hair, as McMahon’s ignored, adoring wife. Only Tilda Swinton, given one scene as a German politician who interrogates and questions McMahon during the talk to the Parliament, gets any material with which she can work, and it’s all of one scene. (There’s also an uncredited cameo at the end of the film that I won’t spoil but that did generate one of the many laugh-out-loud moments I had.)
War Machine has been reviewed and marketed as a satire, but I think it works better as a straight comedy with tragic elements. It’s too close to real events to work as farce; the U.S. effort in Afghanistan was destined to fail, at least once the initial goal of removing the Taleban, who harbored al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, had been achieved, and everything after that was theater. The script certainly hones that to a fine point – the value of the war effort to politicians and the political cost of increasing the engagement both come through – but without parodic exaggeration. Instead, the script succeeds by crafting comedy against an unusual backdrop, including two scenes where Kingsley’s Karzai gets probably the biggest laughs of the film, without telling the viewer anything s/he didn’t already know about the circular nature of the war effort.
(The film contains a clip of President Obama’s speech at West Point, announcing a troop surge in 2009; just last month, almost eight full years later, President Trump announced the same thing. The effort to train Afghan forces to protect their own country has already cost us $70 billion and costs another $4 billion every year, while parts of the country remain within Taleban control or “contested” between the government and insurgents.)
The magazine article that eventually led to this film toppled a general and drew back the curtain on a little bit of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, but ultimately led to no substantive change in our policy there. Even if this film had become a massive hit in theaters – Netflix doesn’t release viewership numbers, so we have no idea how many people have even seen it – it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind on our policy there. War Machine is often very funny, and it may increase your weariness of the war, or our country’s repeated, failed attempts at nation-building (even where our intentions were good) abroad, but I don’t think this movie tells us anything about the war or the politics thereof that we didn’t already know.