81 (Alan Ritchson) is a candidate for RASP, the Army Ranger Assessment and Selection Program. A brutal eight-week course that breaks down and rebuilds successful rangers, it’s the only thing 81 wants, after losing his brother two years earlier in Afghanistan. With a bad knee and entirely undiagnosed PTSD, he bulls his way through the program to the final exercise. But as he reluctantly leads the finalists into their graduation exercise, it becomes clear what they’re in is a war. One where they have no weapons.

There are two ways to watch War Machine. You could watch it as a chest thumping advert for the US military and how badass they are. The presence of Dennis Quaid, noted right-wing figurehead these days and an actor who somehow manages to be bad with under a hundred lines here, certainly speaks to that as do a couple of the more predictable beats.

But there’s another perspective. From a format point of view, this is the sort of movie that used to sit on video store shelves by the dozen. Medium budget, a couple of big ideas, a strong cast and under two hours. Fims like this made a generation or two of moviegoers. I’m one of them, and I see a little more nuance here than you’d expect.

For a start, the movie doesn’t romanticise the RASP process in the slightest. No one has a name, just a candidate number, and War Machine gets some good dramatic beats out of the clash between the soldier’s personalities and the shape they’re being hammered into. Stephen James especially is fantastic as 7, everything 81 is but emotionally functional despite what they’re being put through. James spends a lot of time in the movie largely immobilised but the fact he’s still such a presence demonstrates just how good he is.

81’s isolationism is never a superpower. He’s an open wound of a man, so focused on his goal of making it to the finish line he can’t see the damage he took getting there. Esai Morales, turning in better work than Quaid with fewer lines, delivers the kindest moment in the movie with ‘That finish line, is a starting line’ and 81’s realisation of that is way more emotional growth than you’d expect for a movie like this.  81 isn’t the hero others think he is, and Ritchson gets to flex some acting muscles in the third act as that’s revealed. He’s also, and this is what sold me on it, clever. A combat engineer by training, 81 wins using physics as much as brawn and that’s enormously satisfying. Ritchson isn’t just doing Reacher here. He’s funny, and terrified, and broken by turns and we start to see 81 the human around the same time he does.

But what really sells me on the movie is how quietly subversive it is. The Ranger candidates have no weapons for close to three quarters of the running time and the weapons they get do precious little. The mech that’s hunting them is an enormously fun, cubic and fluid design that’s always got another trick and all of them can kill you. It’s relentless but not indestructible and they’re destructible and completely alone. Every single fight until the last is a staged retreat and the semi-climactic chase sequence is one part heavyweight tank slug fest and one part escalating sprint to disaster. No punches are pulled at all and the intensity of the action and small scale mean that third act in particular really hits home.

Verdict: A lot of folks have complained about the open ending and I’m honestly confused as to why. There is a set up for more if needed, but that set up is larger than 81, who’s story gets a definitive ending here even if he does end up returning. It’s a smart, honest beat that closes the movie very strongly and shows us that 81 has, at last, earned his place. So has War Machine. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

War Machine is on Netflix now. Confusingly, so is another movie, called War Machine. That one stars Brad Pitt and contains no alien war droids.