War Machine (2026)
Directed by: Patrick Hughes
Premise: A group of US Army Ranger recruits encounters an extraterrestrial robot that kills everything in its path.
What Works: War Machine takes a cue from recent combat films with its grit and brutality. Once the soldiers are on the run from the killer alien, War Machine becomes a tight and gripping survivalist action picture. The intimate and credible scale of the film is one of its best qualities. Although the extraterrestrial shoots lasers, the violence has a mostly organic quality. The filmmakers emphasize the difficulty of crossing the terrain which provides opportunities for some impressive stunt work. In one of the film’s best set pieces, the survivors nearly drown while crossing a river. The killer robot is giant and the premise of War Machine recalls a 1950s drive-in film but the naturalistic style makes the movie work.
What Doesn’t: War Machine plays as War of the Worlds reinterpreted by way of Predator. The extraterrestrial killing machine resembles the alien craft from H.G. Wells’ novel. Like Predator, the opening of War Machine plays as a straightforward combat film and the extraterrestrial hunts a group of soldiers in the wilderness. It’s never better than its inspirations. War Machine is too long, especially in its first half. The movie opens with a false first act in which the characters pass through Army Ranger training. This goes on and on; it plays as a recruitment reel for the US Armed Forces. The opening goes on for so long and yet accomplishes so little. The protagonist, played by Alan Ritchson, is the sole survivor of an ambush in Afghanistan and survivor’s guilt has led him to enroll in Ranger training. The filmmakers don’t explore his guilt in any meaningful way and the other soldiers are not characterized. In Predator and films like it each of the squad members has a specific role to play and a defining character trait. That’s not the case in War Machine. Nearly everyone is interchangeable and even Ritchson’s character is one note. He is assigned to role of squad leader but Ritchson’s character doesn’t have any leadership qualities. The soldiers don’t cohere as a team and Ritchson never develops as a leader or faces his guilt. War Machine is pulled between focusing on the squad as a whole or Ritchson’s character as a lone action hero. The movie eventually isolates the protagonist, pitting him one-on-one against the alien and when it does that the movie diminishes the humanistic quality that it halfheartedly pursues.
Disc extras: Available on Netflix.
Bottom Line: War Machine improves considerably in its second half but the first half is a chore to get through. It is well-crafted but War Machine is beset by the impression that we’ve seen this before and done better in other movies.
Episode: #1093 (April 5, 2026)