The pleasures of Netflix’s sci-fi action movie War Machine are simple, straightforward, and gut-level. It’s a movie about tough people enduring rough stuff against long odds, building camaraderie and respect for each other against a background of obstacles, explosions, and an alien threat. Director and co-writer Patrick Hughes (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) points to John McTiernan’s 1987 franchise-starter Predator as an influence, alongside Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. But he could just as well cite reality shows like Deadliest Catch. There’s a strong thread of competence porn running throughout War Machine — and it covers both what’s happening on screen, and what’s clearly going on behind it.
Reacher’s Alan Ritchson stars as an Army sergeant who shut down emotionally after a traumatic event during deployment in Afghanistan. Determined to become an Army Ranger to fulfill a promise to his little brother, he enters RASP, the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. That program is a grueling gauntlet designed to assess candidates’ physical and psychological abilities under the most strenuous combat conditions.
Ritchson’s character, whose name isn’t given — he’s designated “81” in the program — isn’t at his peak in either department. After being wounded in the field, he was turned down for RASP four times on medical grounds. Once the Army finally admits him, his E-6 rank would automatically make him a team leader, but he refuses the position; it’s clear he doesn’t want the responsibility for other people’s lives or decisions.
As he endures the RASP screening (based closely on real-life Ranger qualifying tests), he offends his squadmates by refusing to bond or even engage with them. To add a little more urgency to the drama, 81 has just hit the age limit for RASP qualification, so if he doesn’t pass the program, he’ll never have another chance to honor his promise. And his overseeing officers, played by Dennis Quaid and recent Mission: Impossible villain Esai Morales, feel strongly that 81’s strength, endurance, and doggedness don’t make up for the way he sets himself apart from his fellow soldiers.
This backstory all comes into play when 81 and his fellow RASP finalists are dropped on a remote mountain range for a simulated search-and-destroy mission that turns real when an alien mecha crash-lands in the area and begins picking them off. 81’s most obvious task is to return to base alive, but helping his fellow squaddies survive as well requires teamwork, cooperation, bonding, and stepping up as the leader he so obviously doesn’t want to be.
Photo: Ben King/Netflix
Everything about this story is clear and broad, from 81’s dilemmas (doesn’t want to face his traumas, has to anyway) to the adversary. (Big scary alien machine. Will kill everyone unless stopped.) Most of the ensemble cast doesn’t get a lot of time to individuate themselves past “tank specialist,” “mouthy smart-ass,” or “quietly supportive guy.” Once the relentless action kicks in, individual characterization doesn’t matter much — the questions are less about which of these soldiers might live to the end, and more about who will acquit themselves honorably by protecting each other, defending and transporting the wounded, and eliminating this obvious threat to humanity.
Ritchson, so warm and weird in Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, so snide and slimy in Fast X, so goofy on social media, and so many different things on Reacher, is asked to dial down his personality to nearly nothing, which is a bit of a waste of such a versatile and often colorful actor. But the approach lets Hughes focus on Ritchson’s stunning physicality, as he runs through a series of bone-rattling or teeth-clenching stunts. Here’s where the competency-porn equation kicks in: War Machine is a rip-roaring action movie that puts the stunt choreographers through their paces, whether 81’s squad is getting blown off a rocky cliff or trying to swim or rope-traverse actual Class V rapids. Hughes’ focus on practical stunt work, location shooting, and real, physical environments gives the movie a gritty tactile feel, and Netflix’s marketing leans heavily on the shoot’s authentic physical demands. Watching the movie, it’s easy to believe that hype, and admire the endurance the performers brought to the set. The focus and efficiency 81 and his squad bring to dealing with an impossible situation is similarly satisfying.
War Machine’s sheer stripped-down efficiency does mean fans of the past movies Hughes is channeling may see his influences a little too nakedly. When circumstances get especially bad for the squad and the mouthy smart-ass character, 15 (Blake Richardson), has the requisite panicky breakdown amid smoking wreckage, it’s hard not to see him as a barely reskinned version of Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) in Aliens, wailing “Game over, man! Game over!” Other moments in the movie echo Starship Troopers, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds, and The Terminator as much as Predator or Alien. War Machine isn’t really designed to deliver something you’ve never seen before: It’s a mishmash of familiar beats delivered with enthusiasm and verve, a comfort movie for fans of explosion cinema and compressed emotions delivered via furrowed brows, shouted orders, and meaningful, silent looks.
War Machine curdles a bit in the finale: In a low-key way, the entire movie feels like a military recruitment ad, a Thin Green Line film about the toughness, valor, and loyalty of American soldiers. In the final scene, that undercurrent shifts to a much more blatant recruitment moment, reminiscent of the wave of TV commercials likening Marines to knights in armor battling giant monsters and evil wizards.
Still, War Machine hits all the right spots for this kind of movie. It’s lean and propulsive. The practical stunts are impressive and immersive. And Ritchson, even playing a man so throttled by his own past that he doesn’t want to feel anything, is a compelling screen presence. Past a certain point, War Machine is one long chase sequence, a single-minded, life-on-the-line pursuit with a high-tech hunter going after its gritty, determined targets. It doesn’t need to be anything more complicated than that to scratch the action-movie itch.
War Machine is streaming on Netflix now.