“War Machine” starts like a stereotypical military movie but evolves into something much weirder, perhaps even entertaining at times. A man (Alan Ritchson), grieving the death of his brother after a failed rescue in Afghanistan, enters Ranger Academy to complete his brother’s dream. As part of their training, the recruits who are still standing must survive a practice mission in which their instructors will test their mettle. But during the course of the exercise, the would-be rangers find a robot in the woods – and it is a giant killing machine. Now they have to survive and warn the others about this new threat.
About a third of the way into the movie, Patrick Hughes’ “War Machine” warps into an entirely different movie, and while the transition is far from seamless—the film’s big narrative surprise is teased rather conspicuously—it’s not without its share of gruesome shock. The melee that follows the killer robot is almost cartoonishly violent, showing broken limbs, plenty of bloody wounds, charred skin, a head blown off, and holes blown through bodies.
The murder bot comes with a number of ominous features to make things even more difficult for the recruits, like scanning for victims before destroying them (although it is convenient the robot’s laser turns from blue to red to signal when it’s set to destroy), scrambling communications, and sending compasses spinning like a top, which becomes the visual equivalent of the water ripples in “Jurassic Park” warning that the big dangerous dino approaches. Indeed, the namesake villain of “War Machine” is something akin to a T. rex, lumbering but deadly, but with an extra knack for stealthily jumping ahead of its victims to pick them off one by one.
Co-written by Hughes and James Beaufort, the “War Machine” script is somewhat leaden and predictable outside its central twist. It follows many of the stereotypical war-training beats from “Full Metal Jacket,” including one smart-mouthed recruit and one tough drill sergeant who ruthlessly tests his charges. When the story’s dynamics flip into a violent, outer-space-invasion thriller, the movie focuses on the chase, setting up impossible escapes over waterfalls and through a decommissioned tank, letting go of much of the superfluous backstory. Details are a lot less important when being hunted by a machine impervious to bullets.
Our square-jawed hero, known as 81 (Ritchson)—Ranger trainees are assigned numbers and only called by their numbers—enters the movie as something of a lone wolf, shirking leadership opportunities in favor of quietly proving himself at the back of the class. That’s not the ranger way, but his one last chance to prove himself is how he ends up in the woods, ducking a bloodthirsty machine.
With a long history of action movies and TV shows, Ritchson delivers a perfectly serviceable performance as a man wrestling with his grief and trauma, but he’s also the only one with the experience to keep his ever-shrinking unit moving away from danger. It’s not a memorable performance, but it’s physically demanding and requires a level of stoicism. A stern-faced Esai Morales and grizzled Dennis Quaid bring up the ranks as heads of the Army Ranger Academy, but appear only briefly.
If anyone is equipped enough to handle killer robots from space, it would be these elite recruits, so while the movie’s “man vs. machine” fight is wildly tipped in favor of the murder bot, it still counts for a fair amount of suspense and physical derring-do. Hughes and cinematographer Aaron Morton find some naturally beautiful moments in the chaos, like following the recruits run through a green forest or hovering over them as the team is swept away from danger by a roaring river.
In a strange way, “War Machine” kicks off when it proverbially jumps the shark, introducing something so ridiculous as a big killer robot to jolt the movie awake from its ho-hum military recruiting motions. It’s not a movie built to withstand big questions, but for a high-octane action thriller, it’s a lot more fun when it goes off the rails.
