War Machine
A sci-fi war movie accidentally critiques American exceptionalism
Ritchson spends most of War Machine acting as a physical placeholder for a national identity crisis. In the opening minutes of the film, Taliban insurgents we never even see attack a broken-down Army convoy being repaired by Alan Ritchson, a nameless Staff Sargent. Every soldier dies except for Ritchson, who survives to carry the grief of his fallen brothers (including his literal brother). He enters Ranger school (because his brother had wanted them both to) and becomes known simply as 81 — a serial number the film treats as his entire personality. He is a slab of government-issued hardware, a man whose internal interface has been entirely replaced by a series of tactical commands.
It’s not until Ranger school’s final exam - a simulated mission in a forest - that the main plot kicks in: the would-be Rangers find themselves facing off against a literal, extraterrestrial war machine.
A better movie would have used this role reversal to interrogate the American military industrial complex. When a superior, technologically overwhelming force arrives from the stars to vaporize American soldiers, the logic of an asymmetric war film—where we occupy the desperate role of the insurgent—practically begs for a moment of clarity. We should feel the cold, terrifying weight of what it means to be the insurgent. We should recognize the agony of a people outgunned by a force that doesn’t speak their language, doesn’t care about their names, and views their resistance as a nuisance to be cleared.
But War Machine possesses the self-awareness of a brick. Instead of a critique of the military-industrial complex, we get a sentimental slop-bucket about heroic sacrifice and the man to your left.
In doing so, the film achieves an impressive, if accidental, feat of clinical detachment. The script treats the death of every Ranger as a sacred tragedy, a loss of “kin” that demands a righteous, explosive response. Yet the narrative never pauses to ask what these men were doing in the grinding gears of an endless occupation to begin with. It portrays their deaths as noble offerings to the altar of brotherhood, ignoring the predictable result of an imperial machine that views young men as disposable batteries. The film offers a standard-issue version of grief—rationed, stamped, and deployed to ensure we never have to swallow the bitter truth of our own presence in foreign lands.
This refusal to look in the mirror makes War Machine accidentally profound. It reveals that the American military myth is so impenetrable that even an alien invasion cannot crack the shell of our exceptionalism. When the alien machine starts vaporizing Rangers, the characters don’t think, “Oh, this is what we’ve been doing to the world.” They think, “How dare this happen to us?” Through its own blind spots, the film unintentionally functions as a diagnostic of the American ego. It treats American life as the only “objective” value in the universe, while the rest of the world—and even the galaxy—serves as mere target practice.
The “Band of Brothers” sentimentality redacts reality. We weep for the soldier who dies saving his friend, but we remain silent about the lies that sent them both into a meat grinder in the first place. This high-budget vanity project for a system converts the actual, messy tragedy of war into a clean, marketable product. It unintentionally celebrates the very machinery of death it claims to lament, proving that the Empire’s best defense is its refusal to recognize itself.
Jesus modeled a different kind of service. He didn’t build his kingdom conquest and dehumanization; he offered his own body to break the cycle of the sword. He refused to see people as Other - Samaritan, tax collector, sinner, Gentile. Today, we might say “insurgent” or “target.” He showed us that true humanity involves embracing the other as kin.
War Machine ends with 81 anointed an official Ranger, tasked to lead a new squad against the extraterrestrial invasion force. He survived the alien, but learned nothing about the machine that made him. He remains a number in a system that feeds on the blood of the other while calling it freedom.
The film stumbles into an unintentionally chilling conclusion. The real horror lies in the realization that we have become the machine we claim to fear, surpassing any threat from alien technology. We have built a world that does not value the lives of the faceless, and then we act surprised when the universe reflects that indifference back at us. The fog of our own narcissism is so thick that we can’t see the gears of our own entrapment. War Machine fortuitously proves that until we find the grace to see ourselves in the eyes of the insurgent, we remain the monster we claim to fight.