Nothing is sacred in Tropic Thunder when Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), John Tayback (Nick Nolte), Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) take aim.

LOS ANGELES -- Tropic Thunder has no boundaries for its bad taste. No taboos are left untortured. As a satire of insanely obsessive actors making a war movie, it is an equal opportunity offender.

"Totally, yeah," says co-star Jack Black when Sun Media asks him if Ben Stiller's comedy is meant to be taken seriously, too. "The bar was kind of raised pretty high after Borat came out because it wasn't just funny, it was bringing up all kinds of serious issues. And this totally touches on those things, too."

Among Tropic Thunder topics, Black cites: "Racism in the movie industry; homophobia in the movie industry; and drug addiction; and all these lines you're not supposed to cross when you're making a movie. We really blew open a bunch of taboos. It's kind of cool."

Along with Canadian comic actor Jay Baruchel as the newbie, Black joins fellow Americans Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Brandon T. Jackson as pretentious Hollywood stars who go to Vietnam to shoot an action-intensive war movie. Things go awry and they end up in a real jungle battle, with real bullets, because drug dealers in the infamous Golden Triangle mistake them for U.S. drug enforcement agents.

Meanwhile, Steve Coogan plays the desperate English director of the war movie they are supposed to be making, while a nearly unrecognizable Tom Cruise plays the producer who video conferences from Hollywood. In a semi-bald wig, with scruffy facial hair and an unsightly paunch, Cruise swears up a firestorm and treats his minions like vermin.

In his psychotic performance, Cruise exacts revenge for every overbearing producer or studio head who ever slighted him. "Tom's got real good motivation," says Nick Nolte, who plays the Vietnam vet and double amputee whose book inspires the war movie they are making. "He went at it with glee and there kept being more pages of dialogue that Tom would request because he was going to have tremendous fun with that role."

Tropic Thunder is a Stiller creation. He thought it up years ago while shooting a small role in Empire of the Sun for Steven Spielberg. Through a decade of development, Stiller oversaw the script development and ended up co-writing, co-producing and directing the final movie.

The bittersweet twist is that Tropic Thunder will very likely become a huge summer hit. Meanwhile, almost all of Hollywood's current war movies, specifically those dealing with Iraq, are box-office poison.

"I think it's unfortunate that people don't go to see movies about the war in Iraq," Stiller offers, "but I also feel (it is because) we're in a conflict that's very close to home and people don't want to go there for entertainment."

His effort, however, is supposed to be wildly entertaining. "This is a comedy about making movies. It's not a war comedy. It's not like Catch-22, you know what I mean? It's really a different thing."

Among many targets, Tropic Thunder satirizes Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, Platoon, Hamburger Hill, Full Metal Jacket and others. "Those were all movies I grew up watching and was very affected by," Stiller says. "I enjoyed getting in there and watching them while getting ready for this movie. But this is really a comedy and lives in its own place. I think sometimes, in times of war, people want escapism, too."

The most serious side of the comedy concerns Robert Downey Jr.'s controversial character. He plays an Oscar-winning Australian in Hollywood (among others, Downey admits he is channeling Russell Crowe). But the guy has gone off a little, or a lot, and dyed his skin dark so he can play the African-American character in the movie-within-the-movie.

Like Marlon Brando's Col. Kurtz character in Apocalypse, the character goes crazy in the role, not knowing his true self anymore. Stiller says Downey had to mull the offer over before agreeing to play this role, "because it was obviously a risky venture for him."

Downey finally said yes and started filming Tropic Thunder on the rugged Hawaiian island of Kauai just two days after he finished Iron Man.

"For Downey's part," says Stiller, "it was a very short list of people I thought could pull that off, because you had to buy that he was one of the greatest actors of his generation. So I knew that it couldn't be a comedy guy. It had to be a guy who was one of the greatest actors of his generation. It had to be a guy you bought in that role as a serious actor, and yet the guy had to be funny, too, to be able to pull that off."

Downey was fascinated by the conflicts of the role. He says he sees himself working in a desegregated business while living in the largely segregated city of Los Angeles inside a country that has the potential to make "big leaps" -- or steps backward -- in race relations, depending on what happens in the current presidential campaign.

"Meanwhile, I'm an actor for hire and I make faces for cash and chicken and I thought this job would be really cool and interesting."

Yet he is uncertain what it means. "I don't know," Downey offers. "I mean, I'm not very evolved when it comes to big picture stuff. I just know moment to moment."

In conversations with Stiller while shooting his scenes, Downey came to think, "It's funny and entertaining and, if it's done right, it's not offensive. But I don't know if (perhaps) the risk outweighs the reward. Because the reward is that you make a comedy that people like -- and the risk is something so much more far-reaching than that.

"Then I look at the whole movie and it's just so generally offensive!"

bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca