Netflix’s Brutal New Hit Sci-Fi is Perfect For Impatient Reacher Fans

Netflix’s new sci-fi exists somewhere between Predator and Transformers, which is a considerable genre benchmark to be aiming at. War Machine, from director Patrick Hughes, offers a veiled commentary on the impact of technological progress that destabilizes human involvement. It’s essentially a war movie set in a universe where aliens made RoboCop‘s ED209 sentry robots a reality, and invaded Earth to show how useless meatbags are against such brutal technology.

The bloody sci-fi stars Alan Ritchson – currently enjoying action fans’ adoration thanks to his strong, almost-silent performance at the heart of Prime’s Reacher. He’s joined by a number of comparative newcomers – which is always a good sign for their chances of survival – and a handful of veterans like Dennis Quaid, Esai Morales, and Jai Courtney, and steals the show largely offering the same massive, contemplative energy as he does in Reacher. In fact, there’s more to that parallel, but for anyone getting impatient to see more of Ritchson as Reacher, this is a good fix. Some of it falls down, but there are good bones.

Rating: 2.5/5

PROS	CONS
Alan Ritcher does his Reacher act perfectly.	It’s too long, and the pace struggles.
The robot villain is genuinely menacing.	None of the other characters are built up enough that you care about them.
Big brutal action, if you like that sort of thing.	Some of the dialogue is a little on the nose.

Why War Machine Works Best as a Reacher Replacement

Not only is Alan Ritchson as large and serious as he is in Reacher, he’s also got the traumatic wounds of his brother’s death (who is played briefly by Jai Courtney) that drive him. He’s also an outsider, largely mocked (or at least misunderstood) by his new-found comrades, and both a tactical genius and a bit of a loose cannon with mountains of plot armor. If you were casting his character – the enigmatically nameless 81 – and you watched Reacher, you’d have an instant eureka moment.

Ritchson is on the crest of a wave, and while his comedy chops are very good (see Blue Mountain State for evidence), we can probably expect to see more of these projects that take advantage of his old-school action credentials. He’s a massive unit, to put it mildly, and he’s also as likeable as the 1980s and 1990s action heroes along with that physique. War Machine casts him as a modern day Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and the killer alien robot as the Predator stalking him and his comrades through the North American forests.

There’s a similar seemingly insurmountable challenge as Dutch faced, and he’s forced to be just as resourceful. And Ritchson is easily the best thing here, which is ironic, given he consciously clips his performance. So basically, if you’re looking for something to fill that Reacher hole, this ia good choice. It’s just a shame the film overall isn’t up to Reacher‘s level.

Where War Machine Falls Apart

The biggest issue with War Machine is that it takes itself a lot more seriously than it probably should have: it’s as if Hughes took Ritchson’s performance as the blueprint for the tone and pace and decided to pump the brakes. The result is you don’t actually get to the Predator-like section where the impressively imposing war-bot unleashes hell for about 40 minutes. And overall, a near two hour movie that amounts to a cat-and-mouse chase through the woods is just too long. The result is jarring changes of pace and the urge throughout to check your watch.

Trimmed down by at least 30 minutes, this could have been a riot. Alas, it spends too much time wasting time, which is curious, because none of that runtime goes to establishing any of the characters enough for them to be anything but walking dead meat. In Predator and Aliens, most (if not quite all) of the grunts had personalities, and while there is an attempt made here with caricatures, whenever someone is obliterated by the alien tech, you just sort of shrug. And there are so many of them that the cumulative impact is a little weak, too. I’d like to think this is the same sort of commentary on the hopeless brutality of war as giving none of the characters names (they’re known by their Rangers training numbers), but I suspect that might be giving War Machine too much credit.

Still, watch it for Ritchson, and enjoy the sight of what is essentially Reacher fighting a giant alien robot almost without weapons, and you’ll get enough out of it to scratch a specific itch. I just wouldn’t expect you to remember much else of it. Have you seen War Machine? What did you think? What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

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