‘War Machine’ Review: Alan Ritchson in Netflix’s Basic Sci-Fi Actioner

Action movies don’t get more generic than this second Netflix movie featuring the exact same title as the 2017 Brad Pitt starrer (good luck on your searches). War Machine stars Alan Ritchson of Reacher 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.

Ritchson’s character, known only as “81,” is given a cursory backstory in the form of an opening scene — set two years before the main action — depicting a tragic military incident involving his brother (an unfortunately underused Jai Courtney) in Kandahar. Cue the subsequent flashbacks as 81 frequently relives his trauma at inopportune moments.

Undergoing training in Colorado with a new batch of recruits, 81 finds himself recruited by his commanding officers (Dennis Quaid 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’s 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.

The film’s first half largely features montages of the sort of hardcore training exercises — including walking at the bottom of a pool while carrying heavy weights — 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 — who include “109” (Jack Patten), “7” (Stephan James) and “57” (Daniel Webber) — fight for their lives. It’s just as well the characters don’t have names, since they’re largely indistinguishable from each other.

Director 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 and The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel. 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.

There’s 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’s R rating is well-deserved thanks to the profusion of burnt and dismembered bodies on view in the alien machine’s wake.

Unfortunately, the screenplay by Hughes and co-writer James Beaufort leaves much to be desired, with lines like “Help me with 7!” 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: “Wait, you mean it’s from another planet?” one of the soldiers asks. “Well, it sure as shit ain’t from this one,” 81 replies. Not even Stallone or Schwarzenegger could sell dialogue like that.  

Ritchson, whose massive bulk qualifies as a special effect itself, displays his usual charisma, but the one-note nature of the proceedings doesn’t 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.

The film finishes on the sort of gung-ho patriotic note — complete with soldiers running in slow-motion with their rifles in hand — that could easily wind up in an American military recruitment commercial. They’ll probably leave out the fact that the film was shot primarily in Australia.