I’m not going to delve into politics in my review of filmmaker William Kaufman’s latest action shoot-‘em-up Man of War. There’s no need to. Although set against the tumultuous backdrop of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the movie’s commentary on the war is incoherent at best, lackluster at worst. We’re here to see LaMonica Garrett flex his muscles and shoot some folks. And on this front, at least, the film delivers… sort of. If it’s been a while since you’ve watched Liam Neeson or Jason Statham whoop ass, then give this valiant stab at a serious war thriller a shot.
Former Navy SEAL Connor (Garrett) barely settles back in his leather chair, airing out the scars on his bulging pecs, when he gets a desperate call from his niece, Riley (Rosmary Yaneva), an aid worker in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She’s kidnapped by evil Russians. (“Do you smell that, Ivanka?” their leader — who sports a tattoo of Lenin on his chest — hisses, in one of the many nuanced demonstrations of said evil. “The smell of fear.”) After a brief chat with a colleague, Charlie (Jason Patric), Connor declares: “I’m going in with or without your help.”
On his way, he befriends cheeky Bunny (Linds Edwards) and meets his “tour guide”, the “loud and colorful” Dany (Andrew Howard). Together with the latter, our hero stumbles into an intense standoff with the Russian mafia, traverses the countryside on foot during the war’s initial lockdowns and violent exchanges, meets survivors and victims, and shoots and stabs a helluva lot of folks.
Subtle the film is not. It beats and bludgeons with a sledgehammer. Kaufman has a knack for staging a shootout, which is laudable, but we’ve seen it all, man; the whole “knife-through-the-hand-through-the-face” thing isn’t as impressive anymore. As the film’s co-writer (with Paul Reichelt), he could’ve imbued the plot with more novelty and poetry.
“…our hero stumbles into an intense standoff with Russian mafia …”
There is a moment that I wished the film would expand upon. “There is right, there is wrong,” Dany says. To which Connor delivers a succinct but scathing indictment of the American government — and a different viewpoint of the conflict — that frankly outshines Dany’s consequent righteous outburst. “Just sayin’, it ain’t that black and white,” Connor concludes. The same can’t be said of the film.
There are also several promising shots, like Connor and Dany standing in front of a smoking cityscape, that insinuate more than actually happens. There are no qualms with cinematographer Mark Rutledge, who brings his A-game to the project and makes the repetitive bullet fest look more expensive than it most likely was.
Garrett comes off as a bit blank, projecting the same focused intensity throughout the narrative, never really letting us in — perhaps his approach was more of the introspective, “less is more” kind, but it clashes with the “more is more” vibes of the flick instead of counterbalancing them. Andrew Howard leans the other way, as a silver-toothed eccentric Slavic patriot. This tug-of-war between highfalutin and grounded, exaggerated and restrained, makes for a whiplash-inducing viewing.
War is hell. It’s easy to discuss the reasons and causes of any given conflict — being in the midst of it, seeing innocent people die, is a totally different story. That’s the point Man of War ultimately seems to make. Problem is, its villains are still shallow caricatures. Its hero functions as an embodiment of American nationalism. Its filmmaking chops make it watchable and intermittently thrilling, but don’t come here looking for insight.
Learn more at the official Man of War website.
"…give this valiant stab at a serious war thriller a shot..."
