The chances are you’ll think of the not-dissimilar opening sequence in Steven Spielberg's landmark D-Day landings tale Saving Private Ryan. Already, these men are seen going through their Parris Island basic training, reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. Later, they will engage in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which of course featured heavily in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. It would be unfair to claim Berg’s film is derivative, but other, greater, filmmakers have combed this territory before.
The nub of Berg's film is that it's a true story. Following the devastating events of Pearl Harbour in 1941, four American college football stars decide to enlist. Brown University’s John McLaughry (Nicholas Galitzine) is our way into the story, although he's soon mingling with the likes of the charismatic star tackle Bob Bauman (Bill Skarsgård), "touchdown" Tony Butkovich (Ray Nicholson, son of Jack) and Wisconsin Badgers player Dave Schreiner (Tom Francis). Bonded by their love of the game, they find courage under fire.
View Green Video on the source websiteSadly, the game itself isn’t quite the morale-booster the film needs, perhaps because by this point we've seen so much blood and guts: bodies set alight by flamethrowers and savage killings of faceless, nameless Japanese soldiers. Within the carnage, and there is a lot of it, there are moments of nice observation from Berg. A snake merrily slithering through the jungle. A glimpsed photo of Emperor Hirohito, presumably held dear to one of the Japanese, who like the Americans, have little idea what they’re fighting for.
As impressive as the staging is – the battles brilliantly edited by Garrett Donnelly and Jon Otazua – it's not the most emotional of films. "Death doesn't pick fucking sides," we’re told, and perhaps it's this sheer randomness of who survives and who does not that makes it hard to invest in the characters. Undeniably, The Mosquito Bowl is a competently made anti-war film, with Berg drawing on the skillset he's acquired on disaster films like Deepwater Horizon to pull it off. But as muscular as it is, you're left wishing there was more invest in. Even the usually exuberant Skarsgård is on muted form.
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