A soldier’s remorse takes metallic alien form in “War Machine,” a brawny sci-fi actioner that exhaustingly leans on militaristic brutality to inspire character growth. During its opening minutes, a nameless combat engineer (Alan Ritchson of the series “Reacher”) endures a harrowing surprise attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Two years later, now silent and brooding, he arrives in Colorado for the physically grueling Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. Like his fellow recruits, he’s assigned a number: 81.
The first quarter of Patrick Hughes’s film is a dull training montage, featuring an unapproachable 81 jogging up mountains and rappelling down cliffs. During these scenes, only the principled 7 (Stephan James) tries to connect with 81, causing Sgt. Maj. Sheridan (Dennis Quaid) to view 81’s emotional standoffishness as a liability. During the taciturn candidate’s final training exercise, however, his squad encounters a recently downed robot alien. It mercilessly hunts them. Though Ritchson tries to humanize 81’s sudden thrust into leadership, his tics, doubling as clichés, lack depth.
It’s obvious this hulking extraterrestrial weapon is a mirror of 81, making this a metaphorical fight against himself. Such blunt messaging reduces the onscreen carnage, which relentlessly occurs via this mute machine’s searing lasers, barrage of bombs and kaiju breath, to little more than the human toll required for this particular military man to feel again. Worse yet, the film concludes with hawkish intensity, fashioning itself into a tasteless recruitment video.
War Machine Rated R for strong violence, grisly images and language. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
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