Stop us if any of this sounds familiar...

John Cusack is a blacksuited hitman going through troubled times. He worries endlessly about his fragile psyche and the morality of what he does. There’s a sparky screwball relationship with a beautiful woman who isn’t sure whether to fancy him or fillet him. Joan Cusack and Dan Aykroyd crop up in support...

Alright, so the character names have been changed and it’s not technically a sequel, but anyone not getting a Grosse Pointe Blank 2 vibe must be dead from the neck up. Sadly, after about 20 minutes of clunking ‘comic’ commentary on modern conflict and US politics, you may feel your brain turning to mush.

Instead of Martin Q Blank, this time Cusack is Brand Hauser – an assassin on the payroll of a multinational corporation that has just masterminded “the first war ever to be 100 per cent out-sourced to private enterprise”. Cusack’s range of world-weary grimaces and immaculate timing serve him as well as ever. But the film itself (directed by the little-known Joshua Seftel) is too concerned with scoring smug satire points to develop characters or even tell a coherent story.

The 15-minute Making Of doc is crammed with mutual back-patting, but the only thing that’ll surprise viewers is that they never mention the words “Blank”, “Grosse” or “Pointe” even once. Maybe it’s just as well. Comparing War, Inc to Blank only serves to highlight how much of a mishmash misfire this dreary movie is.

Ceri Thomas