--- title: "Want To Watch Brad Pitt Play A Certain General In This New Trailer? Sure You Do" date: "2017-03-01" modified: "2017-03-01" authors: - name: "Adam Weinstein" link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/adamweinstein/" url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/watch-brad-pitt-mcchrystal-war-machine/" categories: - "Afghanistan War" - "Culture" - "Entertainment" - "History" - "Past Conflicts" --- # Want To Watch Brad Pitt Play A Certain General In This New Trailer? Sure You Do ![]() It’s Wednesday, so it must be time for Brad Pitt to play Army again. But this flick is different: He’s not killing Nazis anymore! Netflix today released a trailer for its Pitt-powered, upcoming feature-length film, “War Machine.” Described as a “[politically charged military satire,]()” the movie is a comedic adaptation of late reporter Michael Hastings’ book, “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJDf8IZ8qU Guess who Pitt plays? A politically incorrect, cheap-beer-liking, four-star general tasked with running Afghanistan operations, named… Dan McMahon. Huh. Let’s chew on that for a second. None ![]() Anyway, check the trailer out above; it looks well-executed, and dark comedy is probably the right approach to Hastings’ reporting, which was as freewheeling, shit-breaking, and occasionally off-message as the ornery green-suiters he skewered. Related: New World War II Spy Thriller Stars Brad Pitt Killing Nazis…Again » Pitt, a noted civilian, has probably spent more time in uniform than I did, in films about killing Nazi soldiers, [blowing up Nazi tanks](), hunting Nazi spies, and now, antagonizing the Taliban and [Joe Biden](). At this point, the actor could probably fare pretty well in a post-board screen for battalion command. Then again, [as another Pitt persona once put it](), “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”