War on Everyone
Director: John Michael McDonagh
Talent: Alexander Skarsgård, Theo James, Michael Peña, Stephanie Sigman
Released: 6th October
With The Guard and Calvary, director John Michael McDonagh announced himself as one of the most exciting new voices in Anglo-Irish cinema. Both films, while deeply flawed, were quite unlike anything ever made on these islands — oblique, darkly comic yet unflinching explorations of some very difficult subjects — and one was left with the impression that McDonagh wasn’t too far from producing a masterpiece worthy of his idiosyncratic talent. War on Everyone, however, is most assuredly not it.
The film, set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, tells of a few days in the life of Terry Monroe (Skarsgård) and Bob Bolaño (Peña), two corrupt police detectives who embark on a collision course with a British crime lord (James) over the proceeds from a racetrack robbery worth a million dollars. Skarsgård gives a brooding, physical performance, occasionally revealing glimpses of his character’s broken psyche and deadpanning to great effect, and it is certainly heartening to see the always watchable Peña take centre stage following a long string of sidekick roles. The rest of the cast, meanwhile, acquit themselves well, with special mention to Tessa Thompson as Monroe’s love interest and Caleb Landry Jones as a grotesque but strangely magnetic strip-club owner.
Nevertheless, all their good work is ultimately wasted as McDonagh, straying from his comfort zone, delivers a script riddled with clichés and flat jokes that succeeds neither as a thriller nor as a comedy. Worst of all – spoiler alert! – is the eventual revelation of the villain’s involvement in child pornography. Besides leaving one with a bad taste in the mouth, it registers mainly as a cheap attempt by the director to legitimise the protagonists’ climactic acts of violence and replace their greed and casual disregard for other human beings with moral righteousness, thus completely negating the preceding 90 minutes of this gutless and very disappointing affair.
Words – Felipe Deakin
