10 Most Underrated Movies Of 2017 (So Far)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%

There's one reason to watch War Machine, and one reason alone: Brad Pitt.

Here's a movie with a central performance that is so utterly compelling in its sheer weirdness that you cannot help but look away from start to finish. It's like Pitt saw his oddball performance in Inglorious Basterds and decided he wanted to top it for hamminess - and here it's the aspect that actually makes War Machine into a really watchable satire, one that seems to have been completely overlooked.

The most impressive thing about Pitt's performance as a US army general, brought in to clean up the mess that is the Afghanistan War, is that it manages to be both silly and sympathetic at the same time. Somehow he makes the character, a comic figure, into somebody we actually care about, whose actions we are interested in following - even when we don't quite understand his motives or agenda.

For all its messy qualities, then, War Machine stands as an absorbing piece of work - one that really doesn't deserve its admittedly lackluster score of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. There's a sense that a lot of folk were expecting a masterpiece of sorts, what with Pitt starring and David Michod directing, and felt let down when it turned out to be a completely different kettle of fish.

But taken as a character study, and as a broad satire on the Afghan conflict, War Machine works and will even stay with you afterwards: you might come away feeling a little confused about the whole affair, but that actually seems like an oddly appropriate reaction given the nature of the war in question. Give this a shot!