Netflix released “War Machine” on Friday, a science fiction action film starring Alan Ritchson that raises an oddly believable military premise: What if the final phase of U.S. Army Ranger selection suddenly involved fighting a giant alien robot?
Directed by Patrick Hughes, “War Machine” follows a group of Ranger candidates grinding through the final stretch of selection when their training scenario collides with something far stranger than sleep deprivation and land navigation. The soldiers discover what appears to be a crashed aircraft deep in the woods. It turns out to be an alien vessel that transforms into a towering mechanical hunter and begins stalking them through the forest.
For veterans watching the film, the most unrealistic part may not be the extraterrestrial robot — it is the fact that nobody immediately assumes the alien is still part of the training scenario.
Anyone who has spent time in the military knows that after enough time in the field, every disaster begins to feel suspiciously like a test. Lost? Training. Hungry? Training. Cold, wet, exhausted and hallucinating? Definitely training. If a giant alien machine emerged from a crash site during Ranger selection, at least one candidate would absolutely ask, “Is this graded?”
Ritchson plays a soldier known only as “81,” which feels exactly like the kind of nickname that would replace an actual name during a miserable training cycle. The character is built like a tank and carries the quiet intensity that helped turn Ritchson into a breakout star in the series “Reacher.” Here, his opponent is not organized crime or a corrupt businessman-turned-warlord, but a massive extraterrestrial war machine with the personality of a bulldozer.
Critics have described the film as a blend of “Predator” and “Transformers,” which is a polite way of saying nobody is going to win an Oscar for this film, but the explosions and over-the-top special effects might. The movie moves quickly through its premise and settles into a simple survival formula. A group of soldiers is trapped in unfamiliar terrain, hunted by something unseen. Their only real plan is to stay alive long enough to figure out how to destroy it.
It is not complicated storytelling. It is also not pretending to be.
That honesty helps the movie. Instead of delivering long speeches about military ethics or global consequences, “War Machine” focuses on the basics. The soldiers run, hide, shoot and occasionally argue about what the machine actually is while trying to reach the next ridgeline.
In that sense, the movie occasionally feels less like a traditional war film and more like a live-action video game level. The team advances through a series of encounters while trying to discover the alien machine’s weak point. Eventually, that responsibility lands on Ritchson’s character, who begins experimenting with ways to damage the machine using whatever equipment the soldiers still have left, blank firing adapters included.
Is the movie perfect? No. Is it so cringe at points that you find yourself wanting more? Yes.
While “War Machine” treats the final field exercise like a chaotic survival event, real training environments are far more controlled and deliberate. Ranger selection, for example, is designed to push soldiers through exhaustion and uncertainty without actually turning the woods into a sci-fi battlefield.
The movie does not aim for that kind of realism. Instead, it asks a simpler question: What would happen if soldiers trained to survive brutal field exercises suddenly had to apply those same skills to an alien invasion?
The answer, according to “War Machine,” is that they would probably treat it like any other mission.
They would form a plan.
They would start shooting.
And someone in the formation would still wonder if the whole thing was being graded.
Observation Post is the Military Times one-stop shop for all things off-duty. Stories may reflect author observations.
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