The past 15 years of American war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere have brought the public several incarnations of a very particular media archetype: the übermensch general.
These commanders are portrayed as cold-blooded killers who also understand the importance of cultural sensitivity and winning hearts and minds. They are buff Ivy League graduates who lug dog-eared copies of Thucydides into combat zones. And they are strategic and organizational geniuses who are also comfortable shooting the shit with the grunts who would follow them to the gates of hell. If only the politicians would get out of the generals’ way, their backers in the media and Washington insist, we might finally be able to bring these hopeless conflicts under control. Inevitably, these superheroes are brought down by the most human of faults. In the case of Stanley McChrystal, he got a little too mouthy in front of a reporter. In the case of David Petraeus, he slept with his biographer. And in the cases of H.R. McMaster and James Mattis, they went to work for Donald Trump.
McChrystal’s story is the inspiration for writer-director David Michôd’s new Netflix film, War Machine, based on a book by the late journalist Michael Hastings, whose 2010 Rolling Stone profile, “The Runaway General” got the general fired as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, little of Hastings’ fierce wit makes it onto the screen.
In this broad satire, Brad Pitt plays an ever-so-slightly fictionalized version of McChrystal, known in the film as Gen. Glenn McMahon. (The screenplay’s thinking behind who keeps his or her real name and who gets a pseudonym is a little hard to parse: For the characters based on Barack Obama, Hamid Karzai, and Robert Gates, the script keeps their real names, while Hillary Clinton gets a pseudonym.) McMahon’s story is more or less identical to the real McChrystal’s: After gaining renown commanding special operations forces in Iraq, he is named in 2009 as commander of allied forces in Afghanistan by an Obama administration that desperately wants to bring the long-neglected war to a close. Bringing with him a team of sycophantic lackeys and an unwavering confidence in his own abilities, he decides that rather than closing out the war, he wants to defeat the insurgency. He clashes with civilian leaders in Washington who rebuff his requests for more troops and won’t give him face time with the president, disdains the overly cautious “Eurosexual” NATO allies who won’t pull their own weight, and fends off uncomfortable questions from troops who feel unsure about the mission he’s leading them into. The frustration finally boils over when, on an ill-fated trip to Europe, with their plane grounded by the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption, he and his team have a few too many drinks and cut a little too loose in front of a Rolling Stone reporter based on Hastings, setting in motion the general’s downfall. (This ostensibly comedic film inexplicably omits one of the funniest details of the real story: the general’s love for Bud Light Lime.)
Pitt’s performance benefits from the viewer’s memories of his recent swashbuckling, Nazi-killin’ roles in Inglourious Basterds and Fury. Like those characters, McMahon is also a trained killer who made his reputation hunting al-Qaida leaders in Iraq, and the movie makes a good case that when you put one of these guys in charge of running a massive bureaucracy, he’s likely to come off as a bit of a psycho. Drawling bons mots such as “Men are imperfect creatures: Left to their own devices, all they really want to do is play with their dicks and eat chicken” don’t translate quite as well in an office environment. Like the real McChrystal, McMahon is famous for sleeping only four hours a night, eating one meal a day, and running seven miles every morning. War Machine’s main visual joke—and maybe the funniest joke in the movie, which tells you something—is Pitt’s slow, bowlegged jogging gait, suggesting a man who believes sheer determination can make up for a complete lack of grace.
McMahon has been tasked with nation-building in a nation whose people range from indifferent to hostile toward his presence. He is confident that the reason this mission hasn’t succeeded isn’t because it’s impossible and misguided, but because the right man hasn’t tried it yet. The fact that this hubris is encouraged, the film suggests, is symptomatic of much larger problems in military culture and U.S. foreign policy.
I didn’t pick up on this theme through any particular insight on my part, but because it is explicitly stated again and again in the movie, like a thesis statement reiterated in every paragraph of an essay. More often than not, the message is stated to the audience by excellent actors in small, underwritten parts. We hear it from Tilda Swinton, who has one scene as a lefty German politician who questions McMahon’s “sense of self.” We hear it from a troubled Marine corporal played by habitual scene-stealer Lakeith Stanfield. We hear it from Karzai, portrayed by Ben Kingsley as reclusive, losing his grip on reality, and probably stoned. Most of all, we hear it in the intrusive narration by the Hastings stand-in, played by Scoot McNairy. The narration feels downright scoldy at times, lecturing the audience on how the real message of McMahon’s story is not the general’s own failings but the unwinnability of the war in Afghanistan—a point that would be better taken if most of the movie weren’t devoted to establishing the general as a deluded doofus. In any case, to the extent that the movie works at all, it’s as a character study, not a critique of counterinsurgency tactics, ground that’s been pretty well-covered by much better movies.
War Machine is unexpectedly flat and disjointed, and it’s hard to know whether to blame this on Michôd (an Australian director best known for his excellent 2010 crime melodrama, Animal Kingdom) or the general bad vibes around the project: Hastings was killed in a car crash in 2013, after he had sold the movie rights to his book on McChrystal. Whatever the reason, most of the jokes fall flat or go on too long (not content to just name a character “Dick Waddle,” the movie decides that needs to be a running joke), and interesting supporting characters are underdeveloped. Kingsley’s deranged Karzai could have had more screen time. So could Anthony Michael Hall as a lower-ranking general, loosely based on future national security adviser and alleged agent of influence Michael Flynn, whose intense devotion to McMahon seems just this side of platonic.
That War Machine is not a better movie is particularly unfortunate given how well-timed it is. The movie’s argument that we pay too much credence to people “who believe they can win in spite of all evidence to the contrary” is pretty well-taken in the age of Trump. The current president’s Cabinet appointments and deference to the military suggest he’s more than a little in thrall to the cult of the übermensch general. And with the gains of the last “surge” led by McChrystal and his successor, Petraeus, now evaporating in the face of a renewed Taliban insurgency, the administration is once again considering sending thousands of new troops into Afghanistan. A better-made satire could have punctured the absurdity of somehow expecting a different result.
