Reel Tastes & Travels – a light dose of entertainment to wake you up

War Machine is an enjoyable, albeit lightweight, mash-up of the sci-fi and action genres. It starts off in a fairly standard way – in a desert, 2 soldiers who turn out to be brothers reuniting, one brother expressing a dream to join the elite Rangers unit (thus telegraphing his almost certain imminent demise). I went in knowing nothing about the movie and based off this opening was pretty sure what was coming. And the first half unfolded much as expected – the entire team is wiped out in an attack, save one brother who survives and joins the selection process for the Rangers to fulfil his brother’s dream. He grimly endures test after test, culminating in a final challenge -a simulated mission where he and his team have to bomb a downed aircraft and make it back to base without being captured. 

And that’s where it all goes sideways and the sci-fi aspect comes in. They come across a strange craft and when they try to carry out their mission, they discover it is actually an alien robot which spends the rest of the movie stalking through the terrain hunting them down. 

Alan Ritchson (the nameless protagonist), as the only person with a semblance of backstory and character development, has to carry the emotional heft of the film and he does an able job of it. With minimal flashbacks and nuances in his stoic demeanour he deftly portrays the PTSD he’s struggling with as well as the guilt of failing to save his brother. His fellow Ranger trainees are blank canvases, or at best caricatures, and so it is up to him to make us care about their survival, if only through the lens of his own survivor’s guilt. To further drive this home (or ram us over the head with it), the most sympathetic of his teammates gets immobilized early on. And so, the struggle to survive the machine also becomes a struggle to get his injured teammate back to base, thus completing what he couldn’t do for his brother. The movie makes us care just enough to cheer when he finally defeats the machine and makes it back to base. 

War Machine is not a standout film – the story is predictable and not particularly deep, the characters (barring the hero) are barely fleshed out clearly telegraphing their disposability and the ending is faintly ludicrous. What it is though, is good popcorn fare. It knows its audience is here for the action and makes sure to deliver on that front. The alien robot, while a bit reminiscent of ‘War of the Worlds’, is a menacing presence, slowly but relentlessly hunting down the soldiers. Despite being near unstoppable for most of the film, the movie still somehow keeps the tension dialed all the way up whenever it appears on screen. It also manages to thread a fine line between appealing to the American audience’s pride in their military and avoiding crossing over into overly jingoistic territory that may alienate other audiences (helped by the fact that the main enemy is an alien machine).

Overall: As with so many films these days, not a movie that will leave a lasting impression afterwards, but still a decently enjoyable watch with the added benefit of knowing exactly the kind of movie it aspires to be and delivering on that front.