This weekend I had occasion to see the anti-Iraq satire War, Inc. starring John Cusack and Marisa Tomei. Some funny stuff, a little William Klein-esque but with much more heart than Klein, some chintzy staging creating a semi-surreal quality that may have been intentional. Not a bad film as those things go. There was one element that really took me aback though - the performance of Hilary Duff. She plays a girl named Yonica Babyyeah, a Middle Eastern Britney Spears who prances and tarts it up but is actually a scared, confused little mess underneath the make-up and poses. Cusack plays a government hit man posing as a trade show producer; Yonica tries to seduce him but her efforts only make him ill, then he discovers her sensitive side and it clicks home that she's his path to redemption and all that jazz. Anyway, I was surprised at how good Duff was in some of the emotional scenes. I was also shocked at one point to realize that I had just watched Hilary Duff stick a scorpion down her pants and tell a guy to reach down and retrieve it. They grow up so fast. Anyhoo, Hilary Duff just moved a notch ahead of the other frivolous little starlets in my mind. There's talent there.
