Alan Ritchson Is Very Good at Playing One Guy

Alan Ritchson is a bit of a conundrum. After languishing in a series of forgotten movies and TV shows - most notable was his role as Hawk in the DC Universe TV series Titans — he finally seemed to find his footing as the titular character in Reacher on Amazon Prime. One would have thought that it would open plenty of doors for him - the show is wildly popular and Ritchson is terrific in it as the itinerant brilliant detective who is also a hulking menace. Yet his career is oddly off-kilter, stumbling through film projects that gain little attention such as The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and, God help us, Playdate. He’s a solid, if not particularly well-ranged, actor with looks and charisma, so one would think there would be plenty of opportunities.

Not so much. However, this brings us to War Machine, a Netflix film about a group of Army Ranger candidates on a training mission in the wilds of Colorado who encounter a giant alien robot/warship/mech. Reacher leads the cast as 81 (the Ranger candidates are only referred to by their number, never named), who joined the Rangers to honor the memory of his brother who died in Afghanistan. Shortly into their final training mission, they encounter the machine, it promptly eradicates half their team, and the rest of the film deals with their subsequent efforts to evade and hopefully defeat it.

For Ritchson, the role is like a Reacher 2.0 - he plays a stoic, intelligent giant who thinks his way out of the problems that he can’t punch through. He’s quiet and doesn’t play well with others and is reluctant to take the command that he’s dropped into, and his ragtag group of Rangers struggle to find common ground with him. After three seasons of Reacher, he could do this part in his sleep. The rest of the cast are mostly there as extremely bloody cannon fodder (the film is surprisingly gory) or to help develop his character into someone who’s slightly less stoic and silent. Notably are his superior officers, played by Dennis Quaid in Kevin-Costner-Growl mode, and a very much wasted Esai Morales. As for his squad, other than Stephan James (If Beale Street Could Talk) Daniel Webber (Vince Neil in the Motley Crue biopic), and Keiynan Lonsdale (Kid Flash in CW’s The Flash), there aren’t many familiar faces.

Yet War Machine is a tight little action flick, a satisfying dad movie that’s well-directed and with some genuinely exciting moments thanks to the steady hand of director Patrick Hughes (who co-wrote the screenplay). It’s creative and does some inventive stuff with what is clearly a limited budget, yet it never feels cheap. Instead, it’s a Predator throwback, with a bunch of hardcases trapped in the wilderness as they’re hunted by a superior force that they don’t understand. Sure, they have much less personality than Arnie’s musclebound crew, but they’ve got enough to keep the film’s brisk pacing from getting bogged down.

If there’s a great criticism to be lobbed at it, it’s that it simultaneously feels like an Army recruiting video. The feeling of it being military propaganda is strong, especially thanks to the 15-minute training montage at the beginning of sweating men and women traversing obstacle courses and firing down gun ranges. Perhaps it’s just that we’re so much more aware of the problematic nature of the military in the current times, but it often feels gratuitous (yes, even with it being a film that takes place during Ranger training).

If you can get past its small-scale faults and its large-scale propagandist roots (and I’m not here to tell you that you should), it’s a surprisingly satisfying, capably made little bit of sci-fi action, with Ritchson in a solid, if familiar role that showcases his physicality and range. War Machine isn’t making any top ten lists, but it’s a fun and amiable enough diversion that’s worth a look.