Brad Pitt Combats Absurdities in New 'War Machine' Trailer

“I’m just trying to work this thing out,” says Brad Pitt’s gruff, exasperated military commander at the start of the new War Machine trailer (watch it above). It’s a complicated, if not altogether hopeless, mission judging by this latest peek at the Netflix original black comedy, which will mine some seriously absurdist political humor from the theater of the Afghan war.

Directed by David Michôd, working in a far lighter vein than his breakthrough crime drama Animal Kingdom, War Machine will track the ups and downs of the U.S. military’s effort to bring peace and stability to the conflict-wracked region — while also killing lots of its inhabitants. Those inherent contradictions figure to help give the film a mirthful energy, driven most directly by Pitt as a U.S. general trying to navigate a logistical and ethical quagmire in which there are few good — or even sane — choices to be made.

Co-starring Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ben Kingsley, War Machine looks like it will try to capitalize on Pitt’s often-underused comedic skills when it debuts on Netflix — and in select theaters, simultaneously — on May 26.

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