If you put bits of Full Metal Jacket, Predator, and Terminator and blend them together, you might get a sense of what’s going on during Netflix‘s War Machine. It starts out as a straightforward “doing this for my dead loved one” military movie, only to morph into a crazy, half-assed, blow-everything-and-everyone-up fast-paced action film. It stumbles and outright falls on its face numerous times, but the film’s last half is so cartoonishly violent that it is almost entertaining. Almost.
Alan Ritchson (of Reacher fame) plays an emotionally damaged military man, trying to come to grips with the death of his brother after a failed rescue mission in Afghanistan. To honor his brother’s memory, he keeps the promise they made before his death to become an Army Ranger, which means surviving the grueling Ranger Academy training.
Ritchson’s character is simply referred to by the number he received in training: 81. When he heads off to the final test mission with other recruits, they run into what turns out to be a giant-killing robot. The group must survive to get the word out about the danger coming.
On the one hand, War Machine is beautifully simple, getting the actors from point A to B to the final act. However, the Netflix film asks a lot of the audience and gives us little, especially in terms of its characters. It is hard to care about anyone in this film, even with the obvious focus on Ritchson. It doesn’t give us much time with any of them to form an emotional bond.
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To be fair, there are very few of them left standing by the end, so that does impact things in that regard. Still, the cast comes off a bit flat and cliché, making the first half of the film a real slog.
However, it is pretty interesting to see how absurd a turn the film makes, pitting this group against the seemingly unstoppable killing machine and bathing the screen in blood, flying body parts, and death. Hats off to director Patrick Hughes for giving the audience some close-up battle scenes and destruction, while doing a decent job of moving the story along.
There are some good moments with actors Dennis Quaid (Sheridan) and Esai Morales (Torres) as Army Rangers and higher-ranking officers. While they both have limited screen presence, they do a serviceable job in their respective roles.
The latter half of War Machine had its moments, though, and the action-packed sci-fi thriller is more successful, giving the audience something more than what came before. The all-out assault by the killer robot is over-the-top at times but also fun, capped off by a mad chase scene with some great action.
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Unfortunately, at times, some CGI effects were very noticeable, making the cartoon violence less enjoyable when it looked a little too unrealistic. That being said, the budget for the action sequences was high enough to make chunks of the film blow by, literally and figuratively.
Ritchson’s 81 works through grief, physical and mental pain, toughness, sadness, determination, and finally accepts the leadership that has been thrust upon him. The killer robot from outer space is just what he needs to take out his anger and frustration, which leads to a fun, improbable face-off between the two at the end. The ridiculousness of it all fits the film like a glove, but the way the robot is ultimately defeated is anticlimactic to say the least.
The frustration with War Machine is that it could have been much more than a ridiculous B-movie extravaganza. The imminent robot invasion hints at an unnecessary sequel, but perhaps this is best left as a standalone film.
