Skip to content

Reel Reviews: It’s a rough night for the war machine

Due to schedules and recent back injuries, Taylor and Howe saw two different movies this week
web1_170620-VMS-ReelReviewsWEB
Kate McKinnon and Scarlett Johansson open a big can of worms in Rough Night . (Sony Pictures photo)

Due to summer-time schedules and recent back injuries, Taylor and Howe saw two different movies this week. Howe went to the cinema and saw Rough Night, a comedy about a bachelorette party that goes wrong after a male stripper dies. Taylor stayed at home and watched War Machine, a Netflix original film about an eccentric four-star General sent in to Afghanistan to “clean up the mess.”

We say, “Rough Night is a bad remake. War Machine is good, but odd.”

TAYLOR: War Machine, produced by and starring Brad Pitt, is an immediately odd film because Pitt’s character, General Glenn McMahon, is such an odd man. As you watch this film, which begins with a quick, flashy pace, you wonder, “Is this a comedy? What’s with this guy? Oh I see, he’s eccentric. This is a serious movie about serious things? Yes it is, cast by the confused in the absurd theatre of war.” As you wonder, the story unfolds, ultimately revealing through exceptionally played personal gestures that this odd man is real. This absurdity is real. It’s not funny unless life is funny, which is sometimes true.

HOWE: I wasn’t really looking forward to Rough Night. I had seen the trailer numerous times over the last couple of months, and to be totally honest, it didn’t look that great. Scarlett Johansson in a comedy role, hmmm, was that really going to work? The answer is sort of, but that is mostly down to the two stars opposite her: Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell. I haven’t seen Very Bad Things, the 1998 dark comedy where a bachelor party accidentally kills a stripper, so I can’t compare it to this remake.

TAYLOR: If you are able to accept General McMahon as real and not just Brad Pitt being weird, the War Machine referenced in the title becomes cleverly apparent. It is exposed in the overall story that war isn’t about victory, it’s about warring. War Machine is a fictionalized version of The Operators, a non-fiction book by Micheal Hastings about General Stanley McChristal. In War Machine the caricatures are turned up to eleven, but the message remains the same. Yes, it’s brash. Yes, it’s cheeky. It’s satire. Watch it. It’s different.

HOWE: Rough Night has plenty of laughs. But what I expect from a comedy are some real giggles that stand out in my memory the next morning. That’s how I know I’ve seen a really funny movie. Even now writing this less than twelve hours later, I can’t remember one thing that really stands out or one funny moment. Rough Night is no Bridesmaids. I wish I had seen Cars 3 instead.

Howe gives Rough Night 2.5 jet ski landings out of 5.

Taylor gives War Machine 4.5 cogs out of 5.

— Brian Taylor and Peter Howe are film reviewers based in Vernon. Their column, Reel Reviews, appears every Friday.