Pitt plays fictitious general Glen McMahon who has been put in charge of the long running Afghan war. Not being too well schooled on the subject I thought this was a bio-pic but it looks like they made a guy up so the real guy couldn’t object. Given they had gone to the effort to create a character it’s strange they went with one who didn’t do much or have much of a personality, apart from swearing and twitching a lot.
We meet Glen as he takes office and we are introduced to his local inner circle of troops and specialists. He thinks the war in Afghanistan can be won despite the many obstacles in his path not least political indifference and a not fit for purpose U.N. mandate.
Things start out positively but soon grind to a halt when President Obama avoids Glen’s bids for ‘face time’ and the troops of other nations are less keen to get on board. To mix things up Glen leaks his own report of how things could be done better and agrees to be shadowed by a reporter from ‘Rolling Stone’ who wants to profile him.
Glens plan to get more troops in the field to win the war gets a lukewarm reaction and he has to head to Europe to secure more support from his allies there. Can the war be won or will Glen’s dreams of victory and his own place in history be scuppered by some loose lips and Tilda Swinton doing a dodgy German accent?
This was a decent effort but it really wasn’t worth the two hours that I invested in it. Pitt is adequate but his heavy accent is distracting and it wanders all over the film. His character’s motivations aren’t clear and although he is portrayed as good man with the well being of his troops at his heart he also comes across as rash and gung ho.
Obama, who is only seen fleetingly, and Washington lackey Alan Ruck are seen as nay saying liberals but at the end of the day they are shown to be correct with Glen showing serious a lack of judgement on several fronts. If this was a bio-pic it could be forgiven for showing reality, but as it was in part a work of fiction you‘d have thought they would have made the character more defined.
They did juxtapose Glen’s political manoeuvring with scenes of the troops of the ground facing the hazards of dealing with an insurgent force. I wasn’t convinced by the troops’ gun drills or tactics and for the most part they looked liked actors playing dress up, which they were. The pivotal action that saw some dead civilians was decently done but with too much hand wringing at the end.
I guess part of the character they were showing was that whilst having strong convictions Glen didn’t have the strength to see them through. His dreams of being on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ betrayed his vanity and became his eventual undoing. As it was, Tilda’s character profile was correct and Glen was left on the lecture circuit with his work turned over to Russell Crowe to complete, or at least drag out a bit further.
On the whole was unsatisfying and uneven - basically he came, he saw, and that’s about it.
THE Tag Line - War Machine - What is it good for? About 6/10. 14/23
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