War Machine
Background/Summary
War Machine is about a general, Glenn McMahon, who is born in a military family in Fort Leavenworth. Graduated West Point in 1976. He had a graduate degree in political-affairs and military history from Yale. He was a straight-A student and a troublemaker. His nicknames were the Lion King, G-Man, Big Glen, the Glenemal. He was appointed leader of US coalition forces in Afghanistan. His task is to prepare an assessment so that the government can end the ongoing war. He is enabled to write the assessment but must not request more troops. General Glen and his team believe that this war can be won if they recommend to President Obama to authorize 40,000 troops to secure Helmand Province in order to stabilize the country.
Captain Badi Bassam joined the team. Glen tells the team that he is a soldier and a scholar. He was a “representative” of the Afghan people. Glen also states that he is the face of the New Afghanistan. When it is election time, Badi tells the team that people in Afghanistan do not really understand elections. They think that since the president is alive, everybody is okay. They are confused about why they are having another election. They have the election anyway and the people vote for whoever the local leader tells them to vote for. So they won’t “have their heads chopped off”. There goes on to be a runoff election which delays the review of the assessment.
This event made McMahon mad. So he secretly leaked the assessment to the Washington Post and organized an interview with 60 minutes, he then tell them that in the last 70 days, he has only attended one meeting with Afghanistan’s President. In response, the U.S. government announces that they will send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and that all U.S. and coalition forces in the country will leave in 18 months. To gather the remaining 10,000 troops needed for his strategy to work, McMahon and his men head to Paris to negotiate with the other coalition nations.
When in Paris he gets notified that the president wants to meet with him. The ambassador of Afghanistan warns Glen that if he keeps making the president mad, then he will eventually get fired. When the president arrives he shakes the hand of Glen but leaves shortly after due to a meeting he had to attend. Glen and his wife Jeanie have their wedding anniversary dinner and Jeanie brings up how much time he is abroad fighting instead of being with his family at home.
At a conference where Glen discusses his strategy, Glen is confronted by a German official who is skeptical of his approach and suggests that McMahon’s plans would only lead to more losses. Glen then gets the approval of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s to launch Operation Moshtarak. When the operation begins, Glen is in trouble because civilians are accidentally killed. When he holds a public meeting concerning the incident, the crowd becomes hostile and wants Glen and his crew to leave.
After everything, an article came out saying that Glen and his crew were talking down on the president and how they were mishandling the war effort. Once he is fired he goes back to Washington and takes a job as a civilian consultant
Review/Analysis
Overall I really liked this movie. It was 2 hours long and I felt it was worth it. it was very engaging and had a lot of interesting parts. one part in the movie that I really found interesting was how the President set up a meeting with Glen but decided to skip that and attend another meeting with someone else. I thought this was really confusing because all President Obama did was shake his hand and board Air Force One. If I was Glen McMahon I would be furious.
There is surely a lot of cursing and swearing in this movie so that’s what gives it its TV-MA rating. It also has violence scenes where they are fighting in the war against the Afghans. I wouldn’t recommend showing this video to kids. This video has a good main idea. It is about a guy who was assigned a goal but decides to take advantage of that and try to do things his own way. In the end, it ends up in him getting fired.
“That is a brilliant piece of casting. At its best, “War Machine” crackles with irreverent wit, even if American political craziness circa 2009 looks tame compared with the 2017 version. It takes a while to get going, though. A raft of secondary characters is introduced via voice-over, but most of them fade into the desert-camo background.” I agree with this because they played a scene where actor Reggie Brown acted as President Obama and he looked just like him. I thought they picked the perfect person for him.
The part that I found really sad is when Glen and his wife were at the anniversary dinner and she brings up how he is also away from home and that he needs to spend more time with the family. Glen says to not worry about him and that he wouldn’t be in that position if September 11th didn’t happen or if there were not any pending terrorists.
‘War Machine’ is a moving study of the disastrous impact of war, amidst a lot of laughs. This quote is from Nell Soans from times of India. I agree with this quote because the movie was a reflection of devastation in Afghanistan. There were a lot of civilians injured or killed. The movie was really fun and the humor was enjoyable.
Conclusion
Overall, in my opinion, this is a great movie to watch if you want to have a clear view of what the war in Afghanistan was like. Even though there is a lot of comedy and a lot of controversies, I believe the 2 hours is worth it.
