{"id":460949,"date":"2026-03-06T15:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460949\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T15:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T15:54:08","slug":"alan-ritchson-in-netflixs-basic-sci-fi-actioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/460949\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Ritchson in Netflix’s Basic Sci-Fi Actioner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAction movies don\u2019t get more generic than this second Netflix movie featuring the exact same title as the 2017 Brad Pitt starrer<\/a> (good luck on your searches). War Machine stars Alan Ritchson<\/a> of Reacher<\/a> fame as the leader of a platoon of U.S. Rangers who have the bad luck of encountering a giant killer robot from outer space that seems to be left over from War of the Worlds. The sort of mindless time-killer that will boost your testosterone level while watching it, the film seems perfectly designed for those born too late to have seen the original Predator, or any of its 80s and 90s-era clones, during their theatrical runs.<\/p>\n

\n\tRitchson\u2019s character, known only as \u201c81,\u201d is given a cursory backstory in the form of an opening scene \u2014 set two years before the main action \u2014 depicting a tragic military incident involving his brother (an unfortunately underused Jai Courtney<\/a>) in Kandahar. Cue the subsequent flashbacks as 81 frequently relives his trauma at inopportune moments.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWar Machine\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tNot all it could be.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, March 6
Cast: Alan Ritchson, Blake Richardson, Keiynan Lonsdale, Daniel Webber, Jai Courtney, Esai Morales, Stephan James, Dennis Quaid
Director: Patrick Hughes
Screenwriters: Patrick Hughes, James Beaufort
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated R,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 46 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tUndergoing training in Colorado with a new batch of recruits, 81 finds himself recruited by his commanding officers (Dennis Quaid<\/a> and Esai Morales, competing to see who can be the most gruffly macho) to lead a mission to retrieve a downed pilot in the wilderness. It\u2019s there that they encounter the titular alien creation, who looks like a massive Roomba with legs. And the invader is definitely not friendly, throwing off a barrage of killer rays that blast the men to smithereens.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s first half largely features montages of the sort of hardcore training exercises \u2014 including walking at the bottom of a pool while carrying heavy weights \u2014 that Pete Hegseth probably uses to lull himself to sleep. But all the grunting, grimacing and flexing on display is merely a prelude to the main action, in which 81 and his fellow soldiers \u2014 who include \u201c109\u201d (Jack Patten), \u201c7\u201d (Stephan James) and \u201c57\u201d (Daniel Webber) \u2014 fight for their lives. It\u2019s just as well the characters don\u2019t have names, since they\u2019re largely indistinguishable from each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Patrick Hughes stages the viscerally forceful action scenes with undeniable skill, having garnered the relevant experience with his previous helming of such films as The Expendables 3<\/a> and The Hitman\u2019s Bodyguard and its sequel<\/a>. There are some terrifically staged sequences, including a hair-raising one involving traversing rapids with an overhead rope, for which the stunt performers and Ritchson, who clearly did many of his own stunts, deserved extra pay. <\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also no shortage of pyrotechnics, with the frequent explosions serving as useful reminders to viewers to stop folding their clothes and resume looking at the screen. The film\u2019s R rating is well-deserved thanks to the profusion of burnt and dismembered bodies on view in the alien machine\u2019s wake.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnfortunately, the screenplay by Hughes and co-writer James Beaufort leaves much to be desired, with lines like \u201cHelp me with 7!\u201d sounding like a student imploring a classmate to give him the answer to a difficult test question. Not to mention this exchange during a particularly tense moment: \u201cWait, you mean it\u2019s from another planet?\u201d one of the soldiers asks. \u201cWell, it sure as shit ain\u2019t from this one,\u201d 81 replies. Not even Stallone or Schwarzenegger could sell dialogue like that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRitchson, whose massive bulk qualifies as a special effect itself, displays his usual charisma, but the one-note nature of the proceedings doesn\u2019t give him the opportunity to do much more than look physically or emotionally anguished. Although he does appear very much at home behind the wheel of a massive excavator with which his character battles the alien machine in the climactic sequence.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film finishes on the sort of gung-ho patriotic note \u2014 complete with soldiers running in slow-motion with their rifles in hand \u2014 that could easily wind up in an American military recruitment commercial. They\u2019ll probably leave out the fact that the film was shot primarily in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Action movies don\u2019t get more generic than this second Netflix movie featuring the exact same title as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[59215,165632,96,59,165633,165634,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-460949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alan-ritchson","tag-dennis-quaid","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-jai-courtney","tag-the-hitmans-bodyguard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}