War Machine is the latest war film on Netflix starring Brad Pitt… No, wait. That’s the other Netflix original war film called War Machine. This new Netflix original is called War Machine, but it stars Alan Ritchson, and this one also uses the military for the plot. 2026’s War Machine was one I had no expectations for. I wasn’t even going to watch it, if I’m being honest, because of how generic it looked from the trailer. I think Ritchson is a great guy, and ultimately this film turns out to be some mindless, crowd-pleasing action, but surprisingly fairly decent. Will I remember the 2026 film War Machine by the end of the year, or hell, in a few months? No. Was it a really fun 1h47m of my time on a Friday night? Oh yeah.

War Machine is exactly the type of film it is marketed as. There’s a giant alien mech—one might say a war machine—that these Army Rangers stumble across during their training exercise. But thankfully for the United States Army, they’ve got their own war machine, which is Alan Ritchson, who is the biggest and baddest dude to exist. It’s the premise of Predator (1987), except Ritchson and company don’t have real guns or practically anything to fight back with. As straightforward as it could have been to simply half-ass this film, it actually provided me with more. Filmed in Australia and New Zealand, many of the on-location scenes generate something great to look at and for our characters to interact with, instead of something layered with VFX. The practical effects for all of the gore throughout look incredibly good, too—another area that is heavily plastered with VFX nowadays and often takes the viewer out of the experience.

Is this a shallow film? Yes. There is an entire aspect related to Ritchson and his brother, who is ambushed and ultimately dies. They attempt to provide this entire angle on PTSD while also showing all of these Army Rangers he is leading in this training exercise. Well, the giant alien mech is pretty good at killing these recruits, and Ritchson’s character is having a hard time dealing with it. His character, who is named 81, is the only one with any development at all, and really, it is bland as hell. It’s like the Batman origin story that’s always shown in film. I don’t need to see it again, especially for this. There is a decent cast of characters amongst the squad who get killed off as the film progresses, but you, as the audience, have no attachment to them because there was nothing to get attached to in the first place. I suppose it’s okay for a film to do this; however, for War Machine, they insist upon trying to evoke emotion from the audience during lighthearted scenes or redemption arcs, which land flat. What makes 1987’s Predator so amazing is the build-up to what is hunting this small squad. The characters are given lots to do, good dialogue, and overall time to have a personality. That is why those deaths are effective.

I don’t know if the idea was to make these characters in War Machine simply surface-level or not. These characters are recruits; they don’t refer to them by name, only by the number they are given. The angle here could have been interesting if they had really taken hold of it, especially given the current political climate. By this, I mean you have these characters who dedicate so much to training to become the best of the best, yet are referred to only as a number. During this training mission, these individuals are brutally killed, and nobody knows anyone’s name. To the United States, a soldier who is killed is just a number anyway, right? Reports always list the number of soldiers killed, not their names. Soldiers are used for political gain and for something malicious in nature. Those who command are not affected and will never know the names of those they sent out to die. Yet for War Machine, it is all about the United States Army, baby! Oh yeah, being in the military is so cool, and you get to be a badass, and maybe you, the one watching, can be a cool guy like 81. The beginning backstory and training sequence isn’t anti-military, and by the end, it certainly isn’t at all, so the whole number-name idea doesn’t work as well as it could have.

As much of a character and tonal mess as War Machine can be, I think 70% of it is a hell of a good time, and it leans into that. It embraces its absurdity and tries to be as entertaining as it can be. Most of it is fairly relentless, with back-to-back intense action scenes that continue to ramp up as characters get obliterated. The stunt coordinators and stunt team really deserve some credit as they get thrashed around, tossed into trees, thrown down hills, and go through it on some brutal stunts—which, of course, are always done by the people who get the least credit and still make it look great.

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about this film. It is what it’s advertised to be, and that’s really it. It isn’t deep—almost a little too surface-level—but it has the thrills to provide consistent entertainment. Alan Ritchson is always a fun guy to see on screen when he is being a straight badass, and that is absolutely what you get here. As much as I despise the phrase people use for films you need to “turn your brain off for,” because it’s often an excuse for something being bad, I would lump War Machine into that category—not because it is bad, but because it’s exactly what you are going in expecting: mindless entertainment.