Iron Man Three

Rust Never Sleeps
or
The Hot Mess Protocol (Chaotica in Extremis)

One still finds it incredible, if not amazing, that the most popular film-series in the Marvel Universe* continues to be "Iron Man."  Don't get me wrong.  Tony Stark's character is an important one in the pulps (are they still using pulp paper?), but relatively minor next to Captain America, Spider-man, The Fantastic Four or The Hulk.  Now, Cap and Spidey're doing fine in the flickers, but the others, not so much.  And the "Iron Man" series is the lynch-pin for the "Avengers" movies Marvel is creating as major events in the film-calendar.

The secret to its success seems to be, single-handedly, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as billionaire-tech Tony Stark, a move that was initially resisted by Marvel.  But Downey's refusal to stick to text, traditional acting rhythms, and mercurial energy makes even the most generic of roles a circus act, balancing on a tight-wire, never being predictable and finding interesting ways, by body and soul, to entertain, even when cocooned in a tin can.  He's the best special effect in the "Iron Man" series, and dominated and energized the other characters in Joss Whedon's first "Avengers" movie.

Now, out of the factory comes "Iron Man Three" (as it is presented in the titles), the third film where most film series (post-Star Wars, and excepting the films that choose to bifurcate their last chapters) seem to stop, usually because either star-salaries and their negotiations are unsustainable, a logical character arc is achieved, or the film-makers have run out of ideas, or audiences, of interest.  Three seems to be a good stopping point for super-hero movies, too.  Face it, by the third movie, it's all about the toys and the merchandising.  In this one, there's a veritable garage of Iron Man suits in enough variations that they'll be clogging toy store-shelves in a week (and bargain bins in six months).  That's not the reason to see the movie, though, as each suit has little to no screen-time, with no explanation of what they are or what makes them special in any way.

This one is a movie version of the comics' "Extremis" storyline, originally written by Warren Ellis, but changed significantly and inserting one of Gear-head's major villains, the Mandarin—(as portrayed by Ben Kingsley) but not in a way that will impress comics fans, although general audiences might find the use amusing and apt for the times.  Tony Stark is having issues with PTSD from his encounter with "Gods, aliens, and wormholes" in the Avengers movie**  Stark Industries (and it's CEO, Pepper Potts—Gwyneth Paltrow, once again) is being schmoozed by the creepy head of AIM, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), while Tony, sleep-deprived by nightmares, vows to deal with Mandarin-orchestrated terror attacks that have become personal—Jon Favreau's Happy Hogan is left in a coma after an attack on one of America's great industrial centers, Grauman's Chinese Theater, by creepily glowing human bombs.  Tony calls out the Mandarin, inciting an attack on his Malibu cliff-house, leaving him presumed dead and without resources, hiding out in Tennessee.  If all this isn't complicated enough, Col. James Rhodes, the "Iron Patriot," (Don Cheadle) goes after the Mandarin himself at the behest of the government, and is captured, making his combat suit a threat, as well.

That's the plot—colluding and combusting—and Tony must rely less on his established mechanical persona than his own wits and ingenuity.  Would that the filmmakers were, as well.

Favreau, who oversaw the first two movies, executive-produced this one.  The writer-director of this mess is Shane Black, who collaborated with Downey in the not-bad movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and he makes the first two efforts seem brilliant by comparison.  Oh, the charm of Downey is still there—there's one particular scene between him, Paltrow and Rebecca Hall in a three-way snark-argument that's particularly nice—and concerted efforts have been made to keep him out of the suit and his own man throughout most of film.  But the movie's gears seize up every time a big action kerfluffle begins, and the only rhyme or reason for shot placements seems to be to keep the multiple cameras recording the events out of line of sight with each other.  The editing suffers from some odd inserts in the middle of the action that merely confuses, rather than informs what is going on.***  

And, it seems a little obvious to accuse an "Iron Man" movie of a deus ex machina overdose, but this one suffers greatly from it and finally breaks down in a denouement that polishes and shines everything in a nice little package and makes you wonder "that easy, huh?"  This film could have used a little Geritol, frankly, feels a little like spinning its wheels, all the while you hear a lot of grinding in the works.  The film proudly states that "Tony Stark will return."  Oh.  Wow.  Can't wait.

Iron Man 3 is a Rental

Tony Strak kinda, you, know, uh, explains it all for you.

* © Disney Corp.

** In that movie, which is only referenced as "New York," Iron Man must fly a Big Exploding Thing into a wormhole connecting Asgard's multi-verse realm to deal with an Earth-threatening happenstance.  In that other dimension, his suit gives out and he falls unconscious to Earth where he is caught by Dr. Bruce Banner's Hulk, without any of the neck-snapping consequences incurred by girl-friends of Spider-man.

*** Chris Nolan's "Batman" films have gotten flack for that, but Nolan's story-telling sense usually gets him through rough patches and "wait-a-minute" moments that this "Iron Man" entry immediately brings to mind.

Hugo

"One for the Kid"
or
"The Secret in the Clockworks"

Okay, okay.  Let me get this straight...a Martin Scorsese "Kid's Picture?"  In 3-D?

Honestly, I laughed when I saw the preview.  What could be more incongruous than the director of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas making a film for the kiddies.*  I mean, face it, if Scorsese made a baseball film half the players would be killed by line drives. What's next? Spielberg making a snuff film? Kevin Smith making a good one?

Well, will wonders never cease?

Hugo, the film that Scorsese made for the youngsters runs about 2 hours 8 minutes but feels longer, probably because it has so much on its plate.  A period piece—set post-WWI—about a young orphan, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield, possessing the most angelic urchin face since Elijah Wood) who caretakes the extended clockworks inside Paris' Montparnasse station, it also contains a brief history of the birth of the film era, an extended history of the career of French film pioneer Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley) as well as being a feature-length advocacy piece for one of Scorsese's pet projects, film restoration.  But, lest one imagine a long lecture on the subject, it is so imbedded in the film's story as to seem nearly invisible—a message hidden in a film of glass-sugar, so as to make the medicine go down.

Hugo ekes out a mouse-like existence, away from the orphanges, maintaining, unseen, the intricate, but elaborate clockworks that the trains run and the people depend on.  From the crystal clock-faces he can see life passing by and through, the scraps of left-over food that can provide a meal, and across the way the toy-maker's shop (with the very cranky proprietor) from whom he steals the tools and odd-parts to try and repair the last link to his late father (Jude Law, briefly), an amateur watch-maker, who took it upon himself to repair a mechanical automaton, discovered at the museum where he worked—the mechanical man's purpose no one knows.  From his vantage-point, Hugo is at the hub of the station's bustling activity and many side-stories, but when the need or the hunger arises, he'll make time to enter that world through any number of vents, passageways and access-doors, usually one step ahead of the persistent Station Inspector, who is trying to maintain his own kind of order in the depot.

It may be a PG rated kids movie, but it is still Scorsese, so there are dark elements running all the way through, like Dickens. And Scorsese is never one for a light touch, no matter what the rating is or to whom the demographic is targeted. Still, it is Scorsese's breeziest project in years, recalling the set-bound, intricate work he did on New York, New York all those years ago. But, with the tools of CGI, the scope is huge and the director swoops and swings through corridors and tunnels and crawlspaces with a verve he's never displayed before. It's Scorsese unleashed, not unlike the doberman pinscher partner of the station garde (Sacha Baron Cohen, who displays a fine depth for physical comedy, as well as a Sellers-like ability to plumb perverseness from the lightest subjects), who scampers like a hell-hound through the station's ornately vast spaces (the most elaborate set-piece is a nearly wordless pre-title sequence that is its own CGI 3-D hurdle-fest, that is also a tribute to the silent film era.** 

Yeah, it's a kid movie, but it's also a relentless love letter to cinema, with craning shots the old masters would have busted Union rules for, emulations of the arty interpretive shots from the silent era—things the neo-realist Scorsese has never attempted before—while at the same time taking a toymaker/magician/film-makers' fascination with capturing what James Stewart (in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich) called "little pieces of time."  It is all a bit of magic, a bit of technology, a bit of art, presented with a stylists' eye for the dramatic.  And Scorsese, with an army of the best at their cinematic craft—Robert Richardson, Thelma Schoonmaker, Dante Ferretti, Sandy Powell and Howard Shore (Shore's score is wonderfully soaring and French-laced)—including such fine actors as Kingsley, Law, Richard Griffiths, Emily Mortimer, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Kick-Ass' "Hit-Girl" Chloë Grace Moretz and A Serious Man's Michael Stuhlbarg, have taken John Logan's intricately geared script-work and constructed a well-oiled entertainment machine taking today's technology to recreate an ephemeral past.

Wonders will never cease. Not with directors like Scorsese. Thank God!

Hugo is a Full-Price Ticket (and I can't wait to see it in 3-D!)



Méliès accompanying himself on banjo in one of his films.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

* This brings up one of those stories—the ones you repeat over and over again at Family Gatherings—of my Mother's side of the family, when she and her fellow Bannick sisters went to see Scorsese's Casino...because they thought it might be a musical? (!!!!) Casino. The one that begins with De Niro being blown up in a car, and later, a man's head in put in a vise until his eyes pop out, and Joe Pesci is bludgeoned to a pulpy death with a baseball bat—this, after an even more grisly scene where he has sex with Sharon Stone?

I've often wondered at what point in the film did they figure out there wouldn't be any dancing?

** It reminded me of the kids toy-box of Paris opening of Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann's zest-fest mash-up of period piece and slash and dash modern culture.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

"Iran Up the Wall; Iraq Your World"

Jake Gyllenhaal's buffed-up appearance reflects the hefty expansion of the "Prince of Persia" video game from a simple 2-D grid game one level ahead of "Donkey Kong"(see below) to a full-blooded adventure story reminiscent of Hollywood's back-lot recreations of Arabian Night stories, from Doug Fairbanks to Ray Harryhausen. There are no sabre- and bone-rattling skeletons or out-sized shellfish scuttling across the screen in "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," the menaces are purely human and reflect intrigue amidst a royal family with absolute authority over a territory extending, as we're informed, "from the steppes of China to the shores of the Mediterranean."

Why, it's almost as big as the Ponderosa.

To carry the frivolus "Bonanza" analogy further,* King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup) rules with equanimity with the help of his brother Nizam (Ben Kingsley), his regent, and his three sons—two by birth. First in line to be King is Tus (Richard Coyle), then Garsiv (Toby Kebbell). Last up is Dastan (Gyllenhaal), a "street-rat" adopted by the King after witnessing the boy's bravery and selflessness—a sequence that borrows heavily from the "One Jump Ahead" sequence from Disney's "Alladin."** Dastan's prowess video-game leaping from roof-top to roof-top across the alley-ways of the city are demonstrated—and there is a representative slo-mo level shift in every action sequence with eye-rolling regularity—but the new addition proves beneficial, despite being the black sheik of the family.

Time is the key to "Prince of Persia," for once the old king advances in age, it falls on his two and half men-sons to expand his kingdom and keep the CGI populace of the vast CGI cities under control. When we transition to the story-proper, the three are quibbling over who should lead the attack invading the Holy City of Alamut, where it is suspected that a cache of weapons is being created for a suspected attack on the Royal City of Nasaf. That there are weapons is as sure as yellow-cake, but Dastan is suspicious that the the invasion is unnecessary and pointless.

I'd screech to a halt at this point, but you can't screech on sand. Buried deep in the shifting plot-line there are some allusions to recent events in the same region, especially once it's discovered there aren't any "secret weapons caches" anywhere in the city. Why attack it, then? There's something important there, and somebody wants it...in the worst way.

It gets complicated. Before we're done brother is pitted against brother, and Dastan falls under suspicion for war-crimes. He becomes a fugitive, with the reluctant help of the feisty, yet nubile Princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton, I'm sure the writers resisted calling her "Homina, Homina") and some rogues along the way—Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) and the mysterious fighter Seso (Steve Toussaint), the kinds of entertaining second bananas required of this type of tale. Familiar? Yes, but the scenarists and director Mike Newell (Enchanted April, Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—no slouch, he!) manage to satisfy the gamer-need for frenzy and the genre's need for romanticism, while keeping enough fresh ideas to make it all entertaining.

Despite that opening "Alladin" sequence, everything happens a bit differently: the seige of Alamut is staged with an initial assault that is swash-bucklingly aggressive, while also showing ample opportunities why it could go hilariously wrong. Yes, it has the standard big glowing action set-piece at the end, but there are enough dire consequences of it that one actually begins to suspect that the film-makers want to mess with the audience's expectations.

Not to worry. "Prince of Persia" is a big, old-fashioned popcorn adventure movie, done with the love of past desert epics glinting in its sand-encrusted eye. Quibble all you want, it is the best of the video-game movie-adaptations—several levels above, one is tempted to say—determined to entertain the kiddies in all of us.

Be sure and get a large pop-corn. And a large drink—they don't make anything of it, but it gets thirsty out there in the desert.

"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" is a Saturday Matinee.

* But not as far as one could with, say, "Legends of the Fall."

** As Disney is releasing "Prince of Persia," I'm sure any intellectual property problems will be solved by memo.

Shutter Island

"What's yer Next Move, Boss?"
or
"Tag! You're It!"

It is 1954, and out of the fog comes a ferry boat carrying two U.S. Marshalls, heading for "Shutter Island", where squats, in various stages of dis-repair, Ashecliffe, an asylum for the criminally insane. In the "head," sea-sick,* is Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), "the legend" as his partner from Seattle Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo, who has a rather thick Massachusetts accent for it) calls him. The two are investigating the disappearance of an inmate from Ward B, the women's section, and right from the get-go, the two are at a disadvantage.

Upon crossing the electrified fence, their weapons are confiscated, security being what it is. "What?" Teddy smirks at the guard "You act like insanity is catching." The guard only smirks back. That should have been his first clue.

The doctors (Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow) are helpful to a point, but then they become somewhat diffident and challenging, even obstructing, protective of their "advanced" techniques—"a moral fusion between law and order and clinical care." The missing woman, Rachel Solendo (Emily Mortimer), drowned her kids after her husband was killed during the Normandy invasion and has never acknowledged the act. But she somehow managed to escape from a cell, locked from the outside, and with a guard on duty. Investigating, Daniels finds a cryptic note "The Law of 4. Who is 67?"

But that's all surface. Daniels volunteered for this case because he wanted to get to Shutter Island for some personal business. He's still haunted by the death of his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), who died in a fire that was set by an insane fire-bug named Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas**), presently incarcerated in Ashecliffe's Ward C—for the most dangerous criminals. Daniels has done some investigating of the facility, and what he's turned up indicates that radical techniques, from experimental drugs to lobotomies, are being practiced, and as funds are being channelled there from the House Un-American Activities Committee, he thinks the government is working on a secret brainwashing program to infiltrate radicals as double agents. Teddy wants to blow the lid off the place.

That is, if Nature doesn't get the chance first. A hurricane is barrelling down on Shutter Island ("It's like f...ing Kansas out there!"), threatening to cut off power to the electrical systems keeping the prisoners locked up and backed off. If the power goes, there's no back-up generator to kick in.

All of this concerns his partner, Marshall Chuck Aule; Teddy's been doing all this investigating of Ashecliffe, the doctors are resisting co-operating, they have no guns, the facility controls the ferry that's their only way out, and there's a storm coming. They're stuck on an island with a bunch of crazy convicts and an administrative staff who doesn't like them much, and wouldn't mind if they just...oh, had an accident or something. And Teddy's starting to get sick—plagued by migraines that Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) diagnoses only too quickly with some handy aspirin nearby. Then, there's the German Doctor Naehring (Max von Sydow) who's the co-director of Ashcliffe and chief diagnostician. Teddy was one of the soldiers who liberated Dachau, so he's immediately suspicious of him. "Do you believe in God, Marshall?" Naehring challenges him. "Ever seen a death-camp, doctor?" Teddy sneers back.

There's a lot of story-point to juggle,*** but director Martin Scorsese focuses on the atmospherics, which is laid down with a heavy hand in the same manner as he directed "Cape Fear." When it comes to working on genre features, Scorsese is never subtle, and the film is filled with dark spaces (with things that go KA-BOOM in the night), blinding lightning strikes, dripping facades and the most suggestive of dream-sequences. Before too much has happened, you begin to question everything you see, and at that point the director throws the continuity girl off the cliff and does whatever he wants, reality having little to do with the movie. The secret to this kind of film-making is keeping audiences guessing and Scorsese stretches it out as far as he can (to the point where some audience members will still be questioning it after they leave the theater).

Which is unfortunate. Because the most important thing about this movie (and story) is another of author Dennis Lehane's moral quagmires. That is what one should be discussing, as opposed to "What just happened?"

So, call this another in a series of "minor Scorsese films" (but not so minor that it might win a mercy "Best Picture" Oscar), and we hope (again) that we'll see another film from him with more substance than mere style. One wonders how much Scorsese is sacrificing by hitching his film-making wagon to star Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is a bankable star so studios are only too happy to finance a Scorsese film starring him and this allows Scorsese to keep working in a youth-oriented market in the most profit-based center of film-making, Hollywood. But DiCaprio the baby-faced star (no matter how much he scowls) is the water to Scorsese's boiling oil. There is a sense, and it may only be mine, that DiCaprio is shoe-horned into Scorsese projects for which he is not suited, and perhaps the two should have a trial separation to see what kind of film the mature film-maker will produce without his too-young star. In the first part of his career, Scorsese's non-Robert DeNiro films were "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," and "After Hours," two distinctive films that, even without the director's frequent collaborator, said something about our lives and times prismed through Scorsese's kinetic view-finder. After his tampered-with version of "Gangs of New York," he has produced "The Aviator," "The Departed," and this film, all with DiCaprio, and they are films more like "New York, New York," that accentuate style over substance. Great cinematic rides they may be, but they're flashes in a film-can, that leave you still hungry to see a great movie.

"Shutter Island" is a Matinee.

Post-script: I've changed my rating of "Shutter Island" to a matinee and I'm not so sure it is a minor Scorsese film, as it's stayed with me for more than a week, and the images and intricacies keep popping into my brain to slap me upside the head. "Missed it!" I think the "Decaprio" element still brings the movie down a bit, but a second viewing of "Shutter Island" shows intricacies that in the first viewing one doesn't know they don't know. That's subtle film-making that doesn't wave red flags at the audience, and the film slots into Scorsese's body of work quite smoothly. Trouble is, I can't go into details about it, or I might spoil the movie for anybody else.

Well, we'll just leave that for a piece down the road.

* Teddy is another Mass. cop who has the shakes about water. In "Jaws," Chief Brody's wife tries to be helpful: "There's a technical name for it..." "Drowning" is his quick reply.

** No, it's not Robert DeNiro, although it looks like him in the trailer. It's Elias Koteas...with a really big scar.

*** The script is by "Avatar" adapter Laeta Kalogridis, who Lehane thought did a masterful job with a difficult assignment. It is.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" (Steve Zaillian, 1993) There's an episode from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" that's more than a bit absurd, but it has one good line in it. It centers around a baseball game among the crew-members, and while Captain Sisko patiently explains the rules to his Security Officer Mr. Worf, he tells the Klingon, "...the important thing isn't who wins, but enjoying the game." Worf looks at him a moment and says, "If that is true, then why do you keep score?"

Can't argue with that logic. Our culture (and not just our sports culture) is suffused with the "Win at all costs" mentality that has broken down our moral fiber. You can't blame Vince Lombardi alone. One must look at the business class who steal the same "Winning is the only thing" philosophy (and other absurdly inappropriate sports metaphors) to push their paeons to boost profits no matter who gets hurt in the scrimmage (One remembers the tapes of Enron shills guffawing over "granny in California" freezing to death). And there has been the same philosophy in politics as long as there has been politics. We're all about "losing gracefully" in this country. But it seems like "winning gracefully" went out with Christy Mathewson, in favor of the "Ty" Cobb philosophy of play of the spike-and-dance in the end-zone and the smash-dunk in the basket.

And you can't win in this country without crowing you're going to Disneyland.

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" is one of my favorite sports movies. And it's about chess—hardly a sport although you can never say it's not a competition. But the film is very much about sports, as it explores the competitive spirit, and gamesmanship, and being "a good sport," whether you're a winner or a loser. Based on the book by Fred Waitzkin about his son Josh's aptitude and passion for chess at a young age, and the care and nurturing of a savant, "Searching for Bobby Fischer" sounds like a snoozer (especially given it's about chess!), but it's anything but.

Fred Waitzkin (played by Joe Mantegna) is a sports-writer, and, like a lot of parents, his pathology is to re-create his glory days through the accomplishments of his child. A series of gifts of sports paraphenalia to son Joshua (Max Pomeranc) goes unloved, but a walk though Washington Square amid its chess-players catches his youngster's eye, and he begins a self-taught exploration of the game, gaining the attention of the trash-talking Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne), who thinks the kid's the "next Bobby Fischer." Good enough for Dad, who puts him in tournaments with other kid chess-players and their anxious fathers (among them David Paymer and William H. Macy), then enrolls him with a chess-master (Ben Kingsley) to improve his game and toughen his resolve. But, Josh' starts to lose, and his Mom (Joan Allen) and teacher (Laura Linney) express concerns that he may be being pushed too hard. Complications...and tough choices...ensue. Raising a kid is not like a chess game. There aren't any rules, and more often than not any child will be a few moves in front of you. And the mistakes are all too evident: there's the reclusive Bobby Fischer, who serves as mythic inspiration and cautionary tale; and there's the kid from the other side, untempered with a killing instinct and a sociopath's glint in his eye.

Zaillian, a gifted script-writer, takes a difficult text of intellect and psychology and makes a rousing film of it, gentle and tough. If he compromises at all, it's that he gets all of Josh's influences in the same room to kibbitz and try to "Obi-Wan Kenobi" winning strategies to him against "The Other," making it feel a bit too much like Luke "embracing the Force" to tag the entry port on the Death Star. But even there, Zaillian tilts it 90° with a move that simultaneously undercuts the suspense but heightens the stakes, while defining character through action and reinforcing the message of the movie. A moment of grace in a graceless world.

And, now, fifteen years after the movie, we know where Bobby Fischer was: criss-crossing the globe with his winnings, settling in those anonymous places by other chess-masters who could stand to be around him. He'd occassionally spew some anti-semitic venom into a world that no longer cared and had turned their back on him. Not that he could see—he'd already turned his back on humanity. He even wrote a congratulatory letter to Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And he complained that he hadn't "received one thin dime for the totally exploitative Paramount Pictures 'rip-off' full-length feature film." He died of renal failure January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, and on specific instructions only a hand-chosen few witnessed his interment. It was yet another "draw" for Fischer, proving once again you can win and lose simultaneously.

Towards the end of his life "Ty" Cobb was asked if there was anything he would have done differently, and he replied, "I'd have had more friends "

War, Inc.

"War, Inc." (Joshua Seftel, 2008) It's hard to say exactly when the satire of "War, Inc." starts to outwear its welcome. It does a very neat job of skewering so much that was wrong with the Bush Administration and its gung-ho weldng of the Military-Industrial Complex made simple, while at the same time being rather prudish about why it might not be such a good thing to export American culture to other parts of the world. Perhaps the problem is it doesn't take anything seriously, not its believes-in-nothing protagonist, not its comical situation (it's trying to be "Dr. Strangelove" but has more in keeping with "The Americanization of Emily" or even "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home"), it would probably sneer at the legitimate instincts that might engender such over-reactions...and then when it decides to get serious about something, you start looking around for the apple-pie salesman. Let's review.

Hauser is a corporate hit-man (what inspires John Cusack to play assassins—not enough action movie offers?) working for the multi-national, multi-faceted Tamerlane Corporation. Hauser gets a new assignment from the just-out-of-office Vice President (Dan Aykroyd, animating Dick Cheney) to assassinate one Omar Sharif (seriously), the head of UgiGas in Turaqistan, where America has just won the first-in-history 100% "completely out-sourced" war. Hauser is posing as an event-planner for Tamerlane's first Corporate meeting in its new acquisition, the centerpiece of which will be the marriage of Turaqistan's jail bait pop-star Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff, miles away from Disney) to one Ooq-Mi-Fay,* all in an effort to inspire Democracy in the Turaqistanis with American culture.

Already you can see the combination of deep thought and juvenilia mixed in one big lumpy stew, but the movie occasionally scores grisly points: reporters in Turaqistan enjoy the "Imbedded Journalistic Experience," a Six-Flags-like jerk-ride that lets them gape at high-def war-footage while strapped into comfy high-chairs feeling the buffets; and one point Hauser checks in with a chorus line of Turaqistani women high-kicking...with artificial limbs. All visitors be they friendly or terrorist walks away with a Tamerlane SWAG-bag, a running gag that doesn't stale.

Hauser is so dead inside, that the only way he can feel anything is kicking back with a shot-glass of hot-sauce straight, although he is frequently diverted by a left-wing journalist (Marisa Tomei, excellent...again!) trying to get to the bottom of anything. Yonica Babyyeah is your basic Britney-Jessica-Christina-Paris-Lindsey-Miley sex-'tween (authentically played by Hilary Duff, who convincingly curses like a sailor) although the point of the vapidity of America's pop-culture is done to death. John Cusack's sister Joan is his administrative assistant in a performance that is extreme even for her. Sir Ben Kingsley rounds out the cast as Tamerlane's Supreme Commander Walken, in an American accent highly reminiscent of the bad ones Laurence Olivier used to sport, when he deemed to slum as a colonist.

Eventually everything comes to such a frothy rabid boil that it curdles, so much so that even someone sympathetic to its ideas (like me) would rather invest their time in writing a letter to their congressman than sitting through this thing again.

* His father's name is Ooq-Yu-Fay. That might be the tipping point right there.