By Dan Skip Allen

Alan Ritchson is an actor I’ve known for a while now. I first saw him years ago in Smallville and later in Titans. Most recently, I’ve been a bigger supporter of his because of his performance as the title character in Reacher, based on the widely popular Lee Child book series on Prime Video. He is perfectly cast as this Army ex-military police turned regular guy who gets caught up in some adventure. Since his popularity as this famous literary character he’s been given some other roles in small movies, like “Ordinary Angels”, more recently “Motor City” that premiered at the Venice Film Festival , last year and now the Netflix film “War Machine” that comes out this week.

Richson plays a special forces soldier who is on a mission in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when his convoy is shot by enemy insurgents. His brother, played by Jai Courtney, is shot up pretty badly, and Richson’s character has to try to carry him to safety. Fast forward to the present day, and this man seemed to be driven to join RASP,  Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, an elite 75th Army Ranger regiment. His brother and he talked about joining this group of soldiers when their time was up in the other unit they were a part of. He is trying to join this regiment for the third time, and his reputation proceeds. The other trainees look up to him and try to be his friend.  

The military aspects of this film are very well done by Australian director Patrick Hughes (Hitman’s Bodyguard, Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard). He understands the war and training aspects of this story quite well. I personally enjoyed all of the training stuff quite a lot, considering I tried to join the Army when I was a teenager. I went to a special training group to learn everything it took to be a Ranger. Unfortunately for me, my disability got in the way of joining the Army, and there went my dream of being a military man. These scenes in the film were pretty grueling, to say the least. Richson seemed at home in these sequences. I can see why he was chosen for this role in the film.

Besides Richson, there is a pretty good supporting cast for this movie. I already mentioned Courtney, but there is Dennis Quaid and Esai Morales, who play upper level Army personnel at the training base in Colorado. They have their problems with Richson’s character’s age and motivation for being at this training school for the third time. They both are very believable as upper level Army personnel. As far as some of the other trainees go, they all go by numbers. Stephan James is 7. He is a man who gets injured in a battle sequence and has to be rescued by his fellow trainees. James is a good actor, but this was a limiting role for him. The cast as a whole was good, though. Even the cameo by Courtney at the beginning. 

There are two distinct halves of this movie, one set in a realistic world of military operations and trying exercises, and the other is a final mission on a mountainside with a river and wilderness. Constant news reports allude to a sci-fi element in this film. A force that the trainees have to fight against and also try to survive against for lack of a better word. They are literally in a fight for their lives where usually these training exercises are meant to be that way. They are meant to be realistic but not this real. This otherworldly force is pretty formidable, to say the least, but this half of the film felt unrealistic to me in the context of the film. These aspects took me out of the movie. If it were a real war scenario, I would have been more apt to believe what was going on in these scenes. 

There is a mantra that trainees live by but specifically 81, the Richson character. DFQ (Don’t Fuckin Quit) is a creed that helps this man and many Rangers and or other military personnel stand by. I love how this was a main part of the storyline. As someone who tried to join the military, I think having a belief system as part of your service is smart. This couldn’t be an easy lifestyle to live as the main character in this movie finds out. He seems to struggle after the tragedy in his life that happened earlier on the film. We all need a belief system, whether it be religious or otherwise. This movie proves that in a good way, despite the film being a bit too unrealistic to me.

“War Machine” is a military film that is very realistic in the first half of the movie. The cold opening and all of the training scenes were very good. I would have liked more of this stuff, but I’m sure Netflix wouldn’t have wanted to make this movie if that was the case. The cast was good with Richson as the standout. He has a bright career ahead of him. The direction of all the action was pretty good. The message the story was trying to tell was good, except the sci-fi elements weren’t exactly my cup of tea in the particular movie. In other films, that would be different. This overall is a mixed bag of a movie for me.

2 ½ stars