Netflix’s ‘War Machine’ is a Strange Genre Blender
I was fully expecting to hate Patrick Hughes’ War Machine while watching it. Another Netflix piece of content that essentially amalgamates known films into one another and tries to pass it off as an “original film”? What could go wrong? For the first twenty minutes or so, a compact montage that distills the backstory of Staff Sergeant 81 (Alan Ritchson) as he trains to become an Army Ranger; the signs of a bad film were there.
The first act of War Machine
It’s honestly a herculean feat to compact an entire “first act” into a nineteen-minute-long montage where we don’t linger too much on 81’s past and the traumatic experience of when his brother (played by Jai Courtney) was killed in front of him while they were deployed in Afghanistan. However, Hughes can’t wash away the “military propaganda” stench that fills the film. The entire montage serves to let us know that 81 is a cut above the others—a “war machine,” if you will—who will stop at nothing to “cross the finish line” and become a ranger. This, as a way to pay tribute to his slain brother.
Yet, the patriotic music, the abundance of American flags, the Michael Bay-esque slow motion, Dennis Quaid and Esai Morales as drill sergeants discussing American exceptionalism—one can’t help but feel as if you’re watching a (bad) recruitment ad for the United States military. Hughes and cinematographer Aaron Morton don’t shy away from this, either. Rather, they linger in it. The omnipresent flag is always framed against the backdrop of 81; guns are glorified, and the exceptional strength of its protagonist is touted as something anyone can achieve if they have the willpower to do so and enlist.
This all changes, though, when Hughes gets out of the montage and begins to add texture to 81. He makes it to the final stage of the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP) and participates in a simulated mission to find a pilot inside a destroyed airplane, alongside the remaining soldiers who have also advanced. However, the mission goes horribly wrong when an asteroid crash-lands near them, and a walking alien spaceship wakes up beneath the rubble. It begins to attack and severely injure team members. 81 is the remaining (lone) survivor to bring Staff Sergeant 7 (Stephan James) back to base.
A Predator ripoff without a Yautja can still be fun
At that point, the movie becomes a ripoff of John McTiernan’s Predator, and unabashedly so. I mean, the sentient spaceship scans its environment, finds people it perceives as enemies, and blows them up (literally, rips them apart, guts and all). There’s no original bone in War Machine’s body. However, it still doesn’t stop Hughes from staging a bevy of appropriately violent, often surprisingly effective action to showcase the vicious power of a machine the soldiers can’t understand or don’t seem to think has a weak point. After all, grenades and large-scale explosives do nothing, not even slow it down. It’s superhuman. Manpower can’t defeat it… yet.
The action is the best part of War Machine. It consistently keeps us on our toes, and Hughes doesn’t hold back on the violence. The sequence where the soldiers learn of the extent of the spaceship’s powers is a genuine highlight. Bodies get torn apart, fly, and bump into each other as the seismic force of the ship (a marvel of visual effects, by the way) is too much for them to handle.
Some sequences aren’t as well defined as others, notably one set entirely inside an armored vehicle, because the budgetary constraints begin to showcase themselves. That said, the movie remains visually accomplished, and Hughes has notably improved in the action filmmaking department after several flimsy efforts behind the camera (Expendables 3 should’ve killed his career, but we’re glad it hasn’t).
Alan Ritchson is also a solid presence, imbuing 81 with as much complexity as he can, given that we don’t even know his name or many elements of his past. However, his brother’s death has riddled him with enough nightmares that they now act as fuel for him to accomplish his goal of becoming a ranger, no matter the situation he is now stuck in. It allows him to flex some genuinely impressive action-movie muscles during a climax that’s eerily similar to the one found in Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator: Badlands but far more competently shot (we can actually see what’s going on, even in the dark!) and choreographed.
Hughes has never been a particularly impressive filmmaker. War Machine has finally allowed him to showcase what kind of action artist he is, without any constraints. If his next collaboration with Ritchson, a biopic on U.S. Navy SEAL Mike Thornton, retains that same artistry, even if it is based on a true story, we might be in for something special.
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