Netflix unleashes a new and improved (and deeply earnest) War Machine
It’s not hard to imagine that somewhere along the way, someone thought of pitching Netflix’s new sci-fi action thriller War Machine as “not your grandma’s war movie.” Any film that shifts from an extended army training sequence to an ominous alien asteroid barreling towards Earth certainly seems worthy of the distinction. But the best thing about War Machine is that it kind of is your grandma’s war movie. Though writer/director Patrick Hughes starts his story in the modern combat zone of Kandahar, he serves up earnest, sun-dappled Americana that calls to mind not just the Tony Scott films of the 1980s, but the John Ford films of the 1950s. Forget the gritty realism and quippy one-liners that so often define the modern action genre, War Machine is proudly, almost guilelessly old-fashioned.
The opening 30 minutes essentially speedrun the plot of Top Gun only without the shirtless volleyball and drunken karaoke. Reacher star and human boulder Alan Ritchson plays an affable, unnamed soldier yukking it up with his brother (Jai Courtney) as their convoys cross paths under a golden sunrise in the Afghanistan desert. When an attack hits the group, however, Ritchson is left wounded, traumatized, and ready to prove himself by completing an Army Ranger selection course run by Dennis Quaid and Esai Morales in the two days they were on set. (Though the script otherwise doesn’t really concern itself with realism, it does somewhat hilariously pause not once but twice to clarify that the 43-year-old Ritchson is just under the age cutoff for such a thing.)