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Dirty Cops - War on Everyone

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Watch Dirty Cops - War on Everyone with a subscription on Peacock, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video.

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War on Everyone boasts just enough dark humor and infectious energy to make this somewhat middling entry from writer-director John Michael McDonagh an entertaining diversion.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

John Michael McDonagh

Alexander Skarsgård

Terry Monroe

Lord James Mangan

Tessa Thompson

Jackie Hollis

Stephanie Sigman

Michael Peña

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Something terrible must have happened to John Michael McDonagh , the screenwriter and director, after he made “ Calvary .” That 2014 movie, a darkly comic murder mystery and a relentlessly but purposefully morbid exploration of mortality and faith, made me pretty eager to see whatever its creator had up his sleeve next. But this ostensible satire on American cops, crime movies, American values or lack thereof, intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, racism, and so on, is so hackneyed, tired, labored and overstuffed with contempt not only for all of its targets but also its own self that one gets the feeling that the talented Mr. McDonagh has gone mad with rage. Possibly during dealings with the American film industry.

Still, that’s no excuse for a movie that begins with a mime joke. Yeah, a mime joke. You just can’t get enough of those, can you? The film’s protagonists, Terry and Bob, played by Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña respectively, are police detectives in nice blue suits driving a cherry vintage American car and chasing a mime. Terry asks Bob if a mime will make a sound if you hit it with a car, so they’re that kind of cops. They find out, and to justify the gag, a bag of cocaine is found on the mime, who does make a sound and who also bleeds from the mouth after being hit with the car, which is undamaged.

In the early scenes of the film, McDonagh shoots a lot of bright flat, tableaus, and accompanies them with corny horns-blaring Cop TV Show music. One gets to suspecting that he’s going to cough up something like a feature-length version of the video for the Beastie Boys’ “ Sabotage .” If only. The shooting style is meant to accentuate a certain absurdism: Terry and Bob are such awful cops that the crude jokes they make require a certain arty underpinning. Walking into the New Mexico police station where they work, they observe, “Look at all those fu**ing a**holes working”; “Suckers.” Terry has a thing for Glen Campbell . Bob and his wife enjoy trading literary aphorisms and debating their origins. After finding a guy who’s pegged to be the driver in an upcoming heist, Bob accepts that perp’s bribe of a flat-screen TV and an XBox; the next scene shows the TV mounted above another TV; on the bottom screen, his two kids, including one comically obese one, are playing video games, while on the screen above it, Bob is trying to watch “ Out of Sight ,” a film, he explains to his wife is by the “Jewish-American auteur” Steven Soderbergh . His wife corrects him: “He’s Swedish.”

Do you find any of this funny? Because there’s so much more of it. Here’s an exchange between the film’s villain, Lord James Mangan, and his fey henchman, Birdwell ( Caleb Landry Jones , who clearly studied Gary Graham’s work in Paul Schrader ’s “ Hardcore ,” as well as every homophobic stereotype in a ‘70s Ken Russell film):

“You know what the worst thing about jail is?” asks Lord James of Birdwell.

“No, your lordship.” “The violent anal sex. Do you know what the best thing about jail is?”

“The violent anal sex?”

“You’re pretty quick for an American.”

Trying to get in on some heist action, the fellows inveigle an ex-con who’s converted to Islam (at one point he’s seen playing a doubles match of tennis with two women in burqas, ar ar ar, but it’s not a racist joke because the women are superior players, ar ar ar) and once the con ( Malcolm Barrett , whose performance affords the movie its only measures of anything resembling fun) absconds with the money to Iceland, the movie’s plot complications turn more whimsical, necessarily.

But nothing here actually works, at least for any sustained amount of cinematic time. This is one of those movies in which the filmmaker has decided the fat jokes he’s putting in are, in fact, savage condemnations of fat jokes, but they’re really just fat jokes, and not very good ones at that. The Skarsgård character’s obsession with Glen Campbell is such a circa-1998-Tarantino-derivation that McDonagh, unless he’s completely brain-damaged, has to believe it’s a trans-dimensional meta lampoon of a Tarantino derivation, because there’d be no other reason to include it. AND YET, the way it actually plays is as a plain derivation. (The soundtrack also contains a Lee Hazelwood song and some other stuff that one of McDonagh’s assistants might have picked up for him on Record Store Day a couple years back.) Poor Tessa Thompson , of “ Creed ” and “ Dear White People ,” is here compelled to play a stripper who falls for Terry, and she’s depicted reading John Hersey’s “The Algiers Motel Incident,” just to show you that her character, and her character’s creator, are really above all this, which assertion begs certain questions.

Into the nothing-sacred dynamic, the movie eventually introduces a child pornography theme, which compels its wayward characters to do the right thing, or a right thing. Too little, too late. The Iceland-set scenes are very nice to look at though.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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War on Everyone (2017)

Rated R for violence, sexuality/nudity, drug use and pervasive language.

Michael Peña as Bob Bolaño

Alexander Skarsgård as Terry Monroe

Theo James as Lord James Mangan

Tessa Thompson as Jackie Hollis

Caleb Landry Jones as Russell Birdwell

Stephanie Sigman as Dolores Bolaño

David Wilmot as Pádraic Power

John Michael McDonagh

Cinematographer

Bobby Bukowski
Lorne Balfe

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Film Review: ‘War on Everyone’

John Michael McDonagh delivers an American cop movie through Irish eyes, satirizing what passes for the law in the United States.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Everything “War on Everyone” writer-director John Michael McDonagh knows about United States law enforcement he must have learned watching ’70s cop shows, while the rest of his outlook on the American way of life may as well have been cribbed from vintage photographs and Glen Campbell records. Not a bad mix of influences for the wicked-dark Irish satirist to recombine for his virgin foray abroad, a talky, sexy, irreverent and ultimately somewhat surreal buddy-cop movie in which two detectives one suspension shy of early retirement stick their noses into the middle of a million-dollar heist, hoping to bust the criminals and keep the loot for themselves. While his American competition practices the right to remain silent, McDonagh writes his clever, coal-black heart out, delivering another firecracker script, whose explosively entertaining execution boasts considerably more commercial potential than his previous two indies, “Calvary” and “The Guard.”

On the good-cop/bad-cop continuum, Albuquerque police detectives Bob Bolano (Michael Pena) and Terry Monroe ( Alexander Skarsgard ) are something of a paradox: What makes them effective is the fact that they don’t care. Bob has a gorgeous wife and two spoiled kids at home, but doesn’t think twice of risking such domestic bliss to shake down local scumbags — like the cocaine-dealing mime they run down in the opening car chase (hardly a fair match, considering the face-painted perp is on foot and the cops are behind the wheel of a classic blue Monte Carlo coupe). Making a lone exception for his Mexican partner, Terry otherwise hates everybody: He’s racist, misogynist and quite possibly nihilist to boot, explaining that he joined the force because “you can shoot people for no reason.”

While recent American headlines reveal that quip to be too often true, neither Bob nor Terry has ever killed a man. By the bloody end, “War on Everyone” will change all that, despite the stern talking-to the two partners receive on the subject of excessive force from their patience-strained police chief (Paul Reiser, in what turns out to be a decent, if unexpected, bit of casting for the former “Mad About You” star). Flagrantly disrespectful in the face of authority, Bob and Terry have reason to believe a handful of shady characters are gathering in town to organize a caper, and rather than inform their chief, they set out to crack the scheme, let the crime happen and then steal the dough — though they’re dim enough to stake out a downtown mosque when the actual heist happens, leaving three dead (by unprovoked police fire) and the money at large.

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But long before things go bad, their plan puts Bob and Terry in direct contact with exactly the kind of lowlifes they make it their duty to keep off the streets, whether that means snorting cocaine with a Muslim-converted, ex-con informant (Malcolm Barrett) or depriving a crooked goon (Geoffrey Pomeroy) of his cash, his flatscreen TV and his politically savvy, ex-stripper girlfriend (Tessa Thompson). Regardless of the task at hand, the pair make it clear that they don’t take the job all that seriously, unless they immediately stand to benefit — as they do when jetting off to pursue their “Willie Dynamite”-styled snitch all the way to Iceland (about as radical a change of scenery from New Mexico as one could find).

Showing up at a murder scene with cheeseburgers in their hands, Bob and Terry might as well have stepped out of a Quentin Tarantino movie or an Elmore Leonard novel — and though McDonagh shares some of the “Jackie Brown” director’s pop-culture-quoting habits, as Leonard adaptations go, it would seem he’s partial to Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” (seen playing on the aforementioned flatscreen). Like Tarantino, McDonagh is a creative magpie, stealing juicy nuggets from any and everywhere, although he has considerably better taste — or, at the very least, proves to be far better read.

Ergo, in addition to such retro touches as horizontal wipes and a funk-music score (which composer Lorne Balfe manages to squeeze in between Glen Campbell ballads), you can expect McDonagh’s cheeky pastiche to include references to American history, Greek mythology and fun facts about famous suicides. What it doesn’t contain much of is simple, sensitive humanity, instead treating mortality like a joke and serious substance abuse like just another quirky costume flourish (despite his studly Swedish physique, Skarsgard slouches through most of the movie half-soused). If there’s one thing that connects the protagonists in McDonagh’s three features to date, beyond their brazenly non-PC sensibilities, it’s a certain Zen-like ambivalence about whether they live or die.

After “The Guard” and “Calvary,” McDonagh hinted that his next film would close out what he called his “glorified suicide trilogy,” and though that project is presumably still in the pipeline, the “War on Everyone” duo may as well share that same self-destructive spirit. As cops, they make the rules, and even when stripped of their badges, they’re not about to suddenly start following somebody else’s orders. As the investigation proceeds, they destroy a strip club, punch someone’s eye out and uncover a child pornography ring, ratcheting up the stakes until the only thing left to do is walk in, confront big boss James Mangan (a spoiled British lord played by Theo James, looking both dandier and more butch than James Franco) and his prissy right-hand stooge, Birdwell (Caleb Landry Jones, playing a more effeminate version of “Dirty Harry’s” Scorpio killer), in a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff.

Compared with some of the fancy action that has come before — heightened by stalwart editing partner (and former Danny Boyle collaborator) Chris Gill — the climactic shootout actually feels rather tame (probably not the word any of the victims would choose, especially the one Terry nails with one of his famous crotch shots). As with the racetrack heist itself, McDonagh opts not to dwell on the spectacle of bloodletting, but is clear to illustrate its aftermath. As such, “War on Everyone” makes a peculiar sort of statement, riffing on such violent genres as Westerns and cop movies, even as it questions why the country puts guns (and badges) into the hands of angry misfits. As Reiser quips at one point, “This is the police department. We’re surrounded by big fat racist pigs.” If Tarantino had said it, the police unions would have had even more reason to boycott his movie. Coming from across the Pond, the indictment feels doubly damning.

Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 12, 2016. Running time: 98 MIN.

Production: (U.K.) A Reprisal Films, Head Gear Films, Kreo Films FZ, Metrol Technology production, in association with Bankside Films, BFI. (International sales: Bankside Films, London.) Produced by Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez Marengo, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross. Executive producers, Fenella Ross, Elliot Ross. Co-producer, Elizabeth Eves.
Crew: Directed, written by John Michael McDonagh. Camera (color), Bobby Bukowski; editor, Chris Gill; music, Lorne Balfe; music supervisor, Liz Gallacher; production designer, Wynn Thomas; art director, Billy W. Ray; set decorator, Edward McLoughlin; costume designer, Terry Anderson; sound, Bil Clement; sound designer, Phil Lee; supervising sound editor, Ian Wilson; special effects supervisor, David Greene; visual effects supervisor, Mark Wellband; visual effects producer, Fatemeh Khoshkhou; stunt coordinator, Josh Kemble; associate producer, Tom Harbend; assistant director, Dennis Crow; casting, Sarah Finn.
With: Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Pena, Caleb Landry Jones, Malcolm Barrett, Tessa Thompson, Theo James, David Wilmot, Stephanie Sigman, Paul Reiser, Geoffrey Pomeroy.

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‘War on Everyone’ Review: Buddy-Cop Comedy Gets High on Retro Bad-Boy Supply

By David Fear

Remember the Nineties? ? Specifically, that decade’s subgenre of films that proliferated during the A.T. (After Tarantino) era, the ones featuring retro-hip musical deep cuts and gallows-humor dialogue dotting horrific gunfights? Usually the antiheroes were criminals; in the case of writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s tart-tongued throwback, they’re police officers. And from the moment that Terry (Alexander Skarsgård) and Bob (Michael Peña) show up, chasing down a street performer – “Always wondered if you hit a mime, does he make a sound?” – you realize you’ve entered some sort of Lethal Weapon through the looking glass. Or rather, given the vintage muscle cars and funky opening-credits tune, a warped version of a Seventies TV cop show, complete with an informant character asking if he’s Huggy Bear. Tarantino used to talk about his aesthetic being informed by imagining old Starsky and Hutch episodes taken to their unfiltered extreme. Someone apparently took him literally.

War on Everyone ‘s plot – what we’ll call the string of incidents loosely connecting the verbose banter and violence, for brevity’s sake – pits these two mavericks against a vaguely continental bad guy ( Divergent ‘s Theo James, locked in a battle with a Sean Connery impersonation and losing) planning a big score. They’re also up against his fey, pasty lackey (Caleb Landry Jones, fey and pasty), numerous other underworld types, their exasperated chief (Paul Reiser), Bob’s nagging Xbox-obsessed sons, the concepts of sobriety and propriety, the notion of due process, basic human decency … we’ll refer you to the film’s title. An orphaned kid is introduced to make Terry seem slightly more likable. Tessa Thompson’s retired stripper character shows up to do a suspiciously sexy majorette routine and model hot pants. At one point, the action switches from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Iceland. Eventually, people pull firearms en masses on each other. Yes, they are most certainly fired.

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Mileage may vary depending on how fond you are of a Glen Campbell-heavy soundtrack and the chatty, chic nihilism that went out with the Clinton era. Still, if you crave the dodgy thrill of watching two degenerate detectives piss on Miranda rights, you could do a lot worse than spending 90 minutes huffing the fumes of this duo’s cracked chemistry. The idea of pairing Skarsgård and Peña for this kind of multiracial buddy-cop exercise is inspired; the former’s towering thin white drunk and the latter’s stocky Hispanic smart-ass complement each other nicely. And if you have a nostalgic itch for those pomo-pulp crime movies, you could not do better than having McDonagh at the wheel. Like the Irish-English filmmaker’s previous movies The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2016), his latest is fueled by a frenetic, foul-mouthed energy; like the work of his brother, award-winning playwright and fellow filmmaker Martin McDonagh ( In Bruges ), there’s a cheeky intellectualism behind all the profane tough-guy posturing. (John gives his sibling a cameo, in a Polaraid of Thompson’s exes. “He looks like a douchebag,” Skarsgård exclaims.)

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The sub-QT patter and ammo-heavy stand-offs have been always been an integral part of both McDonaghs’ voices, and despite the Southwestern U.S. setting, it’s an inherent Gallic fatalism that sets War apart from legions of imitators. This is not just a superior knock-off but a literate refinement of a formula, one that the director can tweak enough to organically include sex, drugs and namedropping André Breton, Yukio Mishima, Simone de Beauvoir and Pythagoras. It’s also a lot of guys reveling in being misanthropic assholes and pulling guns on each other, with everybody involved getting high on their own bad-boy-behavior supply. To paraphrase the Clash song that ends the movie, these gentlemen flout the law, and the law lost. For some folks, such retrograde pleasures have lost their bloody-knuckled charm. If this is still your bag all these years later and you wish the 1990s had never ended, however, then everyone wins.

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Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña in War on Everyone.

War on Everyone review – bad cop, bad cop on the trail of a plot

John Michael McDonagh steers renegade police duo Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña into quirky Albuquerque, where they bafflingly fail to clean up on laughs

P ull over, punk, for Terry and Bob – renegade police who protect and serve only their self-interest. They bring gun, badge and vice on duty. Terry (Alexander Skarsgård) likes his liquor and Bob (Michael Peña) pounds the powder. Both love nothing more than a quick buck, won dirty.

Bad cop and bad cop careen around New Mexico, protecting their patch by doling out beatings to a DC comic carnival of hoodlums. The buddy film tropes line up for inspection and the Bad Lieutenant formula gets its particulars taken down. That wailing noise in the distance is Terry and Bob’s siren. Or the cries of those coming to writer-director John Michael McDonagh ’s comedy hoping that the low-key class of his previous films, Calvary and The Guard, would have survived the trip to America intact.

Up to now, McDonagh’s films squeezed big ideas into small settings. Calvary ’s conceit (a priest has a week to put his affairs in order before a clerical abuse victim executes him) was mighty, but its execution was subtle. The Guard , also starring Brendan Gleeson, shipped the glamorous thrill of Michael Mann’s Heat to the blustery west coast of Ireland. War on Everyone, McDonagh’s first big US adventure, sees him struggle to find an idea to fill the time. There is no shortage of candidates, though. His Albuquerque is full to busting with quirk (Quaker bank robbers, tennis-playing women in burqas, a foot-massaging gangster, a Glen Campbell -obsessed cop). Packed in, too, is a baffling jaunt to Iceland that must have made sense to the budget, if not the plot. And along with all of that? Cubic miles of dramatic dead air. It’s the same problem that McDonagh’s brother, Martin, tussled with in his similarly unsatisfying comedy thriller Seven Psychopaths : how do you make your American crime story big and exciting, when you made your reputation distilling the tropes to their essence?

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War on Everyone’s plot swings on a bank robbery the cops want a cut of. It’s being done by a crew in the pay of a British lord with a deviant streak (Theo James) and his foppish sidekick (Caleb Landry Jones). Terry and Bob are happy to let the lord loose until an inevitable ante-up elevates James’s character from just plain bad to out-and-out evil. He crosses a line and Terry and Bob’s version of morality finally kicks in. Bad cop films have to pan out this way. You can’t let your heroes be truly, purely horrible. But McDonagh’s moral twist comes in way too late and much too hard. It leaves you dizzy.

The problems come to a head as Terry and Bob chase Landry-Jones’s slimy dandy through the city. As the duo race after the perp, the Fun Lovin’ Criminals’ Bear Hug blasts out of the soundtrack. The New York three-piece are an apt selection for War on Everyone. They borrowed Tarantino’s borrowed 70s aesthetic and made it cool in the nostalgia-hungry 90s. Then everyone, including McDonagh, did the same. There’s fun to be had in the shtick, but the point? It’s missing, presumed dead.

Berlin film festival 2016
John Michael McDonagh
Comedy films
Alexander Skarsgård
Crime films
Berlin film festival

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Review | War on Everyone

War on Everyone

What’s this?

War on Everyone is a film about two corrupt policemen and the mess they get into when they take their bribery down a new direction.

Sounds like the kind of film we’ve seen before

You know I’ve read another review where the film was described as “the thinking person’s Bad Boys “… I guess because this one isn’t about gratuitous macho posturing and explosions, but careful dialogue and plot. But for me, it came across more as the film-lover’s Bad Boys … There was so much to look at and appreciate about how it was made.

I’m talking beautiful landscapes – Iceland of all places! – wide shots to open a scene, and a striking long shot following the main antagonist through his mansion. (I admired that scene particularly; it was a neat device to show Lord James Mangan in his element, but also built up some extra tension.)

And the music was nicely chosen too, with rock and blues alternating with Glen Campbell; a selection which seemed largely bright and unusual for an action movie.

Okay, you liked the style. But what about the story?

Right. Terry and Bob (yes like the Likely Lads ) don’t take their jobs seriously; they do just enough policing to keep their career ticking along and put much more effort into extra-curricular activities to up their income. They hear about an upcoming heist from an informant and go sniffing for a fortune.

Not going to tell you any more about the plot, though: it’s worth watching carefully. How one thing leads to another isn’t spelled out clearly – your intelligence is assumed, dear viewer – but it also does meander somewhat between different groups of characters, locations, and elements of the plot, so do pay attention.

I know some have considered that meandering to be basically a mess, but not me: life’s like that! Sure, there were aspects of the writing and characters which were over-the-top and funny, but I really liked the air of going-with-the-flow that surrounded a good deal of the film:

Informant has gone overseas? Never mind, we’ll find him.
Can’t be arsed with parking carefully? Excuse for a good joke.
Bloke we were looking for is dead? Oh well, finish your lunch.

This makes the characters – on the surface reckless louts – laissez faire and open-minded. And it’s an absolute breath of fresh air: so often we watch protagonists who know everything that’s going on or are capable of handling anything without warning/training/funds. We have just a little time to get to know these guys and then it is easy to accept them as they are.

Funny, I’ve heard that McDonagh writes about offensive loudmouths.

Prior to War on Everyone , John Michael McDonagh wrote and directed The Guard and Calvary , both in Ireland, and both starred Brendan Gleeson. Well, I can’t comment on his films in general – this is the first I’ve seen of his. Pretty much all the characters in this film say what they think without filters, for sure. But they’re not offensive in a “politically incorrect” sense: when Bob and Terry encountered someone they found unusual, they didn’t poke fun or insult them, but talked things through and simply accepted what they couldn’t work out.

Didn’t he make In Bruges as well?

No, that was his brother, Martin . Easy mistake. (See our Tyler’s review of Martin’s latest .)

And who was in War on Everyone ?

MV5BNWI5ZDU4NmItNjRjMS00NjNmLThmY2MtYWU0NTIwODA2MGY2L2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQ2ODE0NDA@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,767_AL_

So was it funny, exciting or what?

Not exciting as such, but colourful and entertaining throughout, and funny on and off. I laughed out loud several times – unusual for me – and I would happily watch it again for the colourful, careless joy of the film. Yeah, there were serious bits too – some very serious – so I struggle to accept the comedy label. And a good deal of the violence was extreme. But all of it was just a little exaggerated, like an old-fashioned cops and robbers show, and terrifically engaging.

Not everyone found it so satisfying, though, did they?

No, indeed! This is a perfect example of mixed reviews… Some critics considered the protagonists shallow and over-the-top; though in my view they had breadth, just not much of it was relevant to the film. Some considered the plot aimless (and I’ve already addressed the “meandering” above)… but to me, it does progress, with a conclusion that shows a real change for the two main characters.

Recommendation

Watch it, for sure; but when you’re wide awake and able to both relish it all and pay good attention.

Article by Alix Turner

Alix joined Ready Steady Cut back in 2017, bringing their love for horror movies and nasty gory films. Unsurprisingly, they are Rotten Tomatoes Approved, bringing vast experience in film critiquing. You will likely see Alix enjoying a bloody horror movie or attending a genre festival.

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War on Everyone : EW review

Crass, senseless, and relentlessly talky, War on Everyone mostly seems like a movie at war with itself. Does it want to be Tarantino kitsch? A winky, post- Deapool satire of buddy-cop action comedies? A vaguely hip Naked Gun 4 1/2 ? Somehow, writer-director John Michael McDonagh ( Calvary ) managed to convince a raft of good actors—including Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Peña, Paul Reiser, and Creed ’s Tessa Thompson—that he had a master plan. What he has instead is a ratatat spray of one-liners, a crude wisp of a plot, and full access to Glenn Campbell’s back catalog.

Peña and Skarsgard are Bob Bolaño and Terry Monroe, New Mexico police officers who put the vice in vice squad, or something. Terry is woodblock-dumb, but also lonely at night in his bare-walled condo; Peña is a Sartre-spouting brainiac who smashes his own kid’s Xbox for fun. The duo run Albuquerque like Attilas with Ray-Bans and badges, smashing the company car into hapless robbery suspects, snorting contraband coke in pool-hall bathrooms, and facing off with a posh crime lord (Theo James) whose strip-joint-owning sideman (Caleb Landry Jones) is the kind of twitchy ambisexual weirdo that once would have been played by Crispin Glover or Udo Keir.

Somewhere in the next 100 minutes, there’s also a “Rhinestone Cowboy” dance sequence, a quick detour to Iceland, about 4,000 face punches, and a desert soliloquy about jellyfish. McDonagh manages a few moments of genuinely gonzo inspiration, but when you’re killing guys with katanas and making casual jihad jokes about women playing tennis in burqas, the War is probably already lost, friends. C+

War on Everyone (2016)

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Review: A snarky, self-conscious cop thriller wages ‘War on Everyone’

Justin Chang reviews “War on Everyone” starring Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña. Video by Jason H. Neubert.

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Early on in “War on Everyone,” a gleefully flippant American cop thriller from the English writer-director John Michael McDonagh, Terry Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), one of New Mexico’s not-so-finest, takes a moment to ruminate on the arts. Examining the walls of his lover’s bedroom, he spies a print of Andrew Wyeth’s 1948 painting “Christina’s World” and remarks on its eerie image of a young woman crawling over a grassy landscape.

No one points out that the woman in “Christina’s World” had polio — probably for the best, given the movie’s casual mockery of various other diseases and disorders, including multiple sclerosis and dyslexia. Nor is any mention made of the fact that Terry’s lover, Jackie (Tessa Thompson), is reading “The Algiers Motel Incident,” John Hersey’s account of a bloody 1967 clash between Detroit cops and rioters that left three black civilians dead.

For the record:

10:28 p.m. May 18, 2024 An earlier version of this review misspelled the last name of “The Algiers Motel Incident” author John Hersey as Hershey.

The book is just a winking, decorative touch in a movie that treats race, criminality and corruption with the same one-smirk-fits-all attitude.

Like so many crime movies conceived in the post-Quentin Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie era, “War on Everyone” is a breezily impudent postmodern object — a fast and ferocious pileup of highbrow allusions and lowbrow insults, shoehorned in between intense episodes of coke-snorting and head-smashing. The guys responsible for much of the mayhem are Terry and his partner, Bob Bolaño (Michael Peña), two dirty detectives who give policing a very bad name, if also an enviable sense of style.

Dressed in snazzy three-piece suits, Terry and Bob spend much of their time driving around Albuquerque in a classic blue muscle car, leaving a trail of broken bottles and battered bodies in their wake. The colorful 1970s stylings of Wynn Thomas’ production design are clearly meant to remind us of that decade’s myriad contributions to the buddy-cop genre, from “The French Connection” to “Starsky & Hutch”; you may also flash back to last year’s ’70s-noir riff “The Nice Guys,” whose bumbling private eyes look like models of serious sleuthing next to the lead duo in “War on Everyone.”

Terry is ostensibly the wilder and crazier of the two, a handsome, heavy-drinking bachelor whose obsession with Glen Campbell accounts for much of the moody country we hear on the soundtrack. Bob, by contrast, is a family man and drive-by intellectual who can riff with ease on Steven Soderbergh and Simone de Beauvoir, though he shows no more restraint than Terry when presented with an opportunity to snort illegal substances or hit a mime with their car.

Eventually Bob and Terry’s foul-mouthed misadventures arrange themselves into a plot of sorts. A stern lecture on bribery and corruption from their exasperated police chief (Paul Reiser) doesn’t keep them from tailing a few goons who are plotting a heist at a downtown mosque — a crime that Bob and Terry aren’t interested in foiling so much as profiting from.

Their unconventional detective work does yield a few personal dividends. Terry steals the enchanting Jackie away from Jimmy (Geoffrey Pomeroy), one of a few crooks involved, while an informant named Reggie X (Malcolm Barrett) leads the duo on a whirlwind trip to Iceland, allowing for a cool blue respite from the warm orange tones of Albuquerque.

Eventually they bumble their way into a strip club run by a dapper British mastermind (Theo James) and his scarily intense henchman (Caleb Landry Jones), at which point the stakes finally get personal — or as personal as things get in a movie as determinedly weightless as this one. The title of “War on Everyone” doesn’t just offer a clue to the story’s final body count. It also sums up the movie’s sneering, anarchic attitude toward anyone and everyone — the various comically abused minorities include Quakers, Muslims, Japanese businessmen and transgender women — unfortunate enough to draw Bob and Terry’s fickle attention.

McDonagh came to international prominence with two Ireland-set, Brendan Gleeson-starring dramas, both touched by a distinct regional blend of pungent fatalism and bleak humor. If “The Guard” (2011) was a stylish but derivative police thriller, then “Calvary” (2014), in which Gleeson played a Catholic priest marked for death, was a major breakthrough: a grim whodunit that morphed into a deeply sincere contemplation of spiritual faith and human weakness.

In “War on Everyone,” his first picture set on American soil, McDonagh has taken one big step westward and several steps backward. The caustic streak that ran through his previous work never ruled out the possibility of authentic, compassionate feeling. But here, the change of scenery forces the writer-director to retreat into a highly strained, artificial world — one that, rather than becoming its own compelling alternate reality, is content to hold up a snarky funhouse mirror to the police procedurals of yesteryear.

It’s pleasurable enough to see Skarsgård and especially Peña, so often cast as a genial second banana, taking pride of place in their own vehicle, even if this one fails to make the most of their considerable chemistry. “We don’t live in your world,” Bob snarls at one of his many enemies. “You live in ours.” He may be right. But personally, I prefer Christina’s.

------------

‘War on Everyone’

Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

MPAA rating: R for violence, sexuality/nudity, drug use and pervasive language

Playing: AMC Burbank Town Center 8, Burbank

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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War On Everyone review

Two renegade cops cause mayhem in the comedy-thriller, War On Everyone. Ryan explains why it's this year's don't-see film...

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The Guard and Calvary writer-director John Michael McDonagh seems to have set himself a creative challenge with his first US feature, War On Everyone. How do you make two borderline sociopathic renegade cops in any way likeable by the end of the movie? In McDonagh’s favour, he’s cast an effortlessly charismatic actor in one of the leads: Michael Peña, who plays bad cop number one Bob Bolaño.

Standing alongside him, hunched over into an uncomfortable looking position to better fit into the frame, is the chiselled Alexander Skarsgard as Terry, a wild-eyed, hard-drinking bruiser who specialises in knocking bad guys out with one punch. War On Everyone opens with Bob and Terry careening along in the latter’s classic muscle car in hot pursuit of a perp who happens to be a mime artist. This allows Bob to deliver the first of many wry quips: “If a mime gets hit by a car, does he make a sound?”

That’s not a bad gag, but like so much in War On Everyone, it’s a contrivance – a non-sequitur in a film packed full of one-liners, sight jokes and general bad taste designed to entertain in the moment rather than add much to the story. Why is Bob carrying one of those lucky waving Chinese cats in one scene? Because it looks funny. Why are there two women in burqas playing tennis with Skarsgard? So McDonagh can drop in a line about jihad.

There’s nothing wrong with scattershot comedy, but after The Guard, which so memorably transferred the staples of the buddy-cop thriller genre to sleepy western Ireland, War On Everyone feels disappointingly like a series of tic-filled characters and odd scenarios scrabbling around for a story.

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That story sees Bob and Terry – who in classic 70s and 80s style are constantly being bawled at by an angry chief (Paul Reiser) for their violent exploits – on the trail of a corrupt businessman and porn baron (played by Theo James) and his army of goons, which includes Caleb Landry Jones as an effete, fuzzy-haired sidekick who looks like the genetic splicing of Scorpio out of Dirty Harry and Leo Sayer . Along the way, Terry has his head turned by an ex-stripper, Jackie (Tessa Thompson), while Bob balances his non-career in the police force with his life at home, which entails insulting his kids, breaking their games consoles and engaging in quasi-philosophical discussions with his wife, Delores (Stephanie Sigman).

War On Everyone riffs voraciously on 70s thrillers and, reaching further back, the same kinds of hardboiled detective stories that have long fired Shane Black’s imagination. Where McDonagh’s film partly falls down is in failing to establish an air of malaise in its modern-day Albuquerque. Movies like The French Connection and the aforementioned Dirty Harry worked because their anti-heroes’ violence and jaded natures were set against a backdrop of social disintegration. In other words, Dirty Harry was a nasty cop for a nasty city.

The city presented in War On Everyone has its fair share of sleaze – grubby bars, drugs, informants and so on – but there’s little in the way of danger to be found here. Instead, the most dangerous people in the city seem to be Bob and Terry, who actively enjoy bullying, belittling and brutalising whoever crosses their path. If they’re tortured souls – and there’s a half-hearted suggestion somewhere in the middle that Terry is – they don’t exactly suffer for their jobs. They live in unaccountably expensive houses and openly mock their fellow officers who actually try to be decent cops.

McDonagh’s too accomplished a writer and director to not land at least a few outright laughs, and for some, the politically-incorrect jokes and retro 70s stylings will be enough to justify the cost of a cinema ticket. But for this writer, the barbs aimed at homosexual and transgender characters feel too harsh for comfort, and coupled with the brutal violence – more often than not meted out by the heroes rather than the villains – leave a bitter aftertaste.

The self-consciously hip dialogue has its characters banter about art, classical literature, Greek mythology and Buddhism. There’s one name-drop conspicuous by its absence here: the Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. Like the characters in her novels, Bob and Terry’s actions are driven exclusively by their own self-interest. Compassion is a joke, the law is meaningless. Only their personal wealth – and the safety of the partners they’ve chosen to protect – is of any concern to them.

Everyone else – the weak, the fat, the bald, the short, the ugly, the foreign, the disabled – are of no consequence. If this is the true meaning behind the movie’s title, then War On Everyone is a bleak comedy indeed.

War On Everyone is out in UK cinemas on the 7th October.

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Ryan Lambie

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Review: ‘War on Everyone’ Is Missing Some Crucial Components

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By Manohla Dargis

Feb. 2, 2017

Squealing tires, firing guns, free-floating nihilism and an occasional look-at-me name check (Simone de Beauvoir) are all part of the package in “War on Everyone.” A compendium of strained talk and post-Tarantino clichés, this is a deeply disappointing new picture by the writer and director John Michael McDonagh, whose first two movies — “ The Guard ” and “ Calvary ” — popped with bright colors, splenetic jokes and actual ideas about people and the world. Mr. McDonagh’s palette and spleen remain mostly intact, but here he’s neglected to include a story or point.

Mr. McDonagh is fond of face-offs and showdowns, of two people going at it hammer and tongs, sometimes with a touch of philosophy and literal blunt instruments. Here, his dialecticians are Terry (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob (Michael Peña), light-fingered Albuquerque detectives. They’re a regular Mutt and Jeff duo, except that they’re not funny or charismatic or much of anything at all. Mostly, they are just vaguely sketched conceits — jaded, corrupt, yammering — who look good in suits, smack around generic villains and make nice with the ladies.

Working with the cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, Mr. McDonagh splashes on the color (red walls, red blood), plays with negative space and at times crowds bodies into tight spaces, creating much-needed tension. His two stars are naturally appealing, but neither seems at ease with Mr. McDonagh’s writing, with its on-and-off rhythms, cliffhanger pauses and ugly slurs. There’s a nice scene in which Terry and Bob give chase, their dark bodies popping against the background, Mr. Skarsgard’s long limbs pinwheeling. And the 1970 Monte Carlo that Terry drives sure is sweet. Mostly, though, the Hobbesian war of the title feels as if it’s been waged by Mr. McDonagh alone.

Rated R for gun violence, a beheading and racial epithets. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes.

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War On Everyone Review

30 Sep 2016

War On Everyone

“It starts and ends with the script,” says one lowlife to another in War On Everyone , as they disapprovingly watch a low-grade porn flick. “If you ain’t got a good script, you ain’t got shit.” Fortunately, the person who wrote and directed this coal-dark crime comedy is John Michael McDonagh, the Irish auteur behind The Guard and Calvary . Both of those films are mordantly funny, unpredictable and set on the rain-moistened Emerald Isle. With his third feature, he has shifted locales to sun-baked New Mexico; but thankfully McDonagh’s delightful weirdness remains intact.

War On Everyone is a spin on maybe the most hackneyed genre of them all, the buddy-cop movie. The customary tropes are all in place: Terry and Bob ride around in their ice-blue Monte Carlo coupe bickering and stopping for cheeseburgers, reporting in sporadically to their grouchy superior (Paul Reiser). There’s a foot chase originating in a strip club and soundtracked by a Fun Lovin’ Criminals track, while another scene riffs on Beverly Hills Cop . But for every moment that seems derivative, there’s a winningly absurd scenario or inspired touch. Terry and Bob, whose names may or may not be a tribute to The Likely Lads , are introduced in hot pursuit of a mime. (“I’ve always wondered… if you hit a mime, does he make a sound?” ponders Terry, shortly before finding out.) There’s also a silly running joke involving our heroes’ ongoing feud with a SWAT team.

The bad-to-the-bones lead duo are joyously over-the-top.

The bad-to-the-bones lead duo are joyously over-the-top: Terry, who has thrush and swigs bottles of beer at breakfast, is a lawman so excessively immoral he even outdoes Chief Wiggum from the famous ‘Bad Cops’ skit in The Simpsons , while Bob makes for a fine foil as the family-man partner who’s far from squeaky-clean himself. The stars are clearly having fun, too — this is redemption for Skarsgård after his bland- Tarzan misstep this summer. The villains they’re up against, meanwhile, are intentionally a lot less funny, but memorably peculiar. Theo James, best known for his role in the Divergent series, comes close to stealing the whole show as louche, Homer-literate aristocrat-scumbag James Mangan, not least because he dominates the best shot of the movie as a Steadicam prowls with him through his debauched mansion. Only a late reveal involving him is misjudged, so bleak that it threatens to tip over the whole movie.

There are other flaws: some scenes aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are (an exchange about Steven Soderbergh’s Out Of Sight starts and ends without scoring a laugh) and the plot itself fails to build up much in the way of suspense. But McDonagh — cutting with old-school line-wipes, cranking up the Glen Campbell — is clearly having a blast. The feeling’s contagious.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – War on Everyone (2016)

October 9, 2016 by Helen Murdoch

War on Everyone , 2016.

Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Starring Michael Pena, Alexander Skarsgard, Theo James, Tessa Thompson, Stephanie Sigman, Caleb Landry Jones, Malcolm Barrett, David Wilmot and Paul Reiser.

Two corrupt cops in New Mexico set out to blackmail and frame every criminal unfortunate enough to cross their path. Things take a sinister turn, however, when they try to intimidate someone who is more dangerous than they are. Or is he?

John Michael McDonagh’s third directorial effort following The Guard and Calvary is deliciously dark, hilarious, ludicrous and great fun. Headed up with two great comedic performances from Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard, War on Everyone isn’t to everyone’s taste but those who love McDonagh’s style will appreciate this offbeat comedy.

Bob (Pena) and Terry (Skarsgard) are the worst cops imaginable. Based down in New Mexico, they take bribes, do drugs, beat the crap out of people – or as Terry says “let’s go fuck some scumbags” – and basically frame everyone they meet. Things take a sinister turn when they come up against intimidating Brit mastermind James Mangan (James) who might be too powerful for them. The plot is convoluted and not all the jokes work, but the journey you go on with these two awful characters is hugely entertaining.

Michael Pena is perfect as family man Bob. He’s vulgar, despicable yet still loveable and he delivers some great one liners. Redeeming himself after a lacklustre performance in The Legend of Tarzan , Skarsgard proves to be a quality comedic actor from pratfalls through to expertly delivered quips. Terry is an alcoholic overgrown man child who loves Glenn Campbell and violence. There isn’t a lot of depth to these characters and anyone who wants to find out why they hate everyone will be disappointed. Terry gets some back story and has a bit of development towards the end of the film, but mainly it’s two guys working through a convoluted and razor sharp script.

Stellar support is provided by McDonagh regular David Wilmot as the perpetually unlucky and hilarious shell suit wearing Padraic Power. As with so many films the villain James Mangan is completely one dimensional but Theo James excels in the role and his delight in cutting someone’s head off with a samurai sword is fantastic.

War on Everyone is more juvenile than McDonagh’s previous films but it delivers a ton of laughs and he’s pulled out two terrific performances from his lead actors.

Flickering Myth Rating: Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Helen Murdoch

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Movie Review: “War on Everyone”

I’m such a huge fan of both of the McDonagh boys — playwright turned writer-director Martin (“In Bruges”, “Seven Psychopaths”) and his brother John Michael (“Calvary,” “The Guard”) that I’m willing to write-off “War on Everyone” as a pastiche that didn’t pay off.

It’s written and directed by John Michael McDonagh as a send-up of Quentin Tarantin o, sort of a QT film created by an educated, literary-minded Irishman. It’s a fiasco, but there’s stiff the occasional riff, rant or reference that works.

It’s a modern-day “rogue cops” picture, set in Albuquerque amidst hoodlums, lowlifes, sand and unflattering sun. As in a Tarantino take on the subject, it’s built around characters trapped in the ’70s.

Detectives Terry Monroe ( Alexander Skarsgard ) and Bob Bolaño ( Michael Peña ) tool around town, swilling beers in a ’72 Monte Carlo, which Monroe is always crashing into bars they’re about to bust up, but is always fully restored by the next scene.

“I LOVE this car,” Monroe has to say, and who wouldn’t?

Monroe’s into old Glen Campbell tunes and lives in a designer house with a pool — in Albuquerque. How can he afford this?

“Overtime.”

They have a snitch, Reggie X (he’s converted to Islam) who isn’t keen on his role.

“Who am I? ” Reggie (Malcolm Barrett) wants to know. “Huggy Bear?”

They have a boss (Paul Reiser), the sort of commanding officer who is always railing at them.

“This is your LAST chance!”

They’re corrupt and cruel. Yeah, they do a few lines of blow with their snitch. Yeah, they’re trigger happy. Yeah, they steal from “the bad guys. And yeah, they run over a mime.

They have no morals or principles. Bust a crook who gets killed? One of them will take up with the dead guy’s girlfriend. She’s played by Tessa Thompson (“Creed”) in ’70s hair and hotpants.

The boys are after Mr. Big, a rich Brit punk (Theo James) called “Your Lordship” by his minions. There are gay underlings played by Caleb Landry Jones and David Wilmot, a sort of inclusive inclusion that almost has a point, at least as far as the plot’s concerned.

And all of it is pitched as a lark, a paint-by-numbers genre pic spiced up with McDonagh’s Tarantino-ish quips and long tirades. A character complains he can’t read their badges because he has dyslexia.

“Are you an actor? All actors seem to be dyslexic nowadays. Used to be called ‘stupidity.'”

And “You’re cops? Where are you guys from? What precinct?”

“We’re from Hell.”

And on and on, discourses on Simone de Beauvoir and Quaker ethics and the whether the “auteur” (director) Steven Soderbergh is Jewish or Swedish.

Minions use words like “contretemps” and the action is stopped for a game of tennis (doubles) with two Muslim women in full burqas.

It’s funny to see Peña playing the “smart funny partner” instead of the dumb one. Skarsgard brings nothing new to the alcoholic crooked cop cliche and Thompson has nothing to play but pretty pouty close-ups in various stages of undress.

McDonagh’s script is so ad hoc, so clumsily random, that nothing adds up to anything. There’s just violence and strip clubs and one-liners that are more clever than funny and Glen Campbell’s Greatest Hits and that lovely blue Monte Carlo.

Neither McDonagh brother (John Michael is the eldest) works often enough that their fans can afford a misfire of this magnitude. And while taking the Irish out of Tarantino is a worthy cause, you’re going to have to bring at least your B-game to that quip fight. This never rates as more than a D.

Cast:Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Peña , Tessa Thompson, Theo James, Paul Reiser

Credits:Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:38

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Movie Review: War on Everyone

Movies about corrupt cops are usually highly dramatic and action-packed affairs. But one thing they usually depict is a cop, or cops, seeking to clear their name from the corruption that appears to stain it, or leaning into it as they’re either the villain or the antihero that is the main point of the movie. The dark humor that’s present in War on Everyone kind of highlights how hard the movie is leaning into the idea that Terry and Bob are corrupt cops and aren’t trying to hide it. What’s funny is that they’re trying to manage their own lives while doing everything they can to do the wrong thing, which gets them paid, but also gets them in trouble. As the movie makes its slightly ponderous way forward though it’s fair to say that this is the way they like it, especially since they don’t try to change. One might think that this would make for a dull movie, and unfortunately, it kind of goes that way eventually as the movie doesn’t really set up a huge and noticeable redemption arc.

What it does is to eventually show how Terry and Bob’s lives do even out, kind of, as the movie rolls along. The fact is that the movie has just enough excitement to it that one might feel the need to watch it from start to finish to make certain that they’ve seen all there is to see. But despite the performances of the actors, which are easily good enough to keep a person watching, it’s still just as easy to look elsewhere while the movie is going since the overall story is, well, kind of lackluster. The whole idea of two corrupt cops that know they’re corrupt and don’t worry about the idea of trying to clear their names is kind of different, but it’s also something that one can’t help but think needs a bit of balance to it.

Watching this movie for long enough makes it clear that such a thing isn’t going to happen since even leaning into the family life of the two main characters makes it clear that any redemption that other characters might spurn or work toward isn’t present in this movie. These cops are made to be bad and they’re proud of what they do. There is a method to the madness, but it’s also made clear throughout the movie that the method is to add to the madness, not shy away from it. Things continue to move along in a manner that many might think would indicate that the main characters are, at one point, going to mee with a demise that’s glorious but still well-earned, or that they’ll continue to be the same people they are and for some reason get rewarded for it. Such stories can confuse those that aren’t used to them, especially since the main idea with many cop movies is that the cops will end up paying for their misdeeds and not get to ride off into the proverbial sunset, or they’ll reform and realize how wrong they were for doing whatever they did. This isn’t that kind of movie, and it’s made rather clear from start to finish.

Terry and Bob know what they’re doing is wrong, they know that they’re making the wrong moves, and yet they continue to make them as things roll forward. That is a big part of what makes the movie intriguing since otherwise, it might be a little too boring of a story to get anyone’s attention. Something about this movie makes it easy to keep watching, even if it doesn’t hold a person’s interest the entire way through. The fits and starts that come throughout this movie are kind of tough to deal with for an action movie since the balance and the flow sometimes feel as though it’s off-kilter and has a tough time catching up. Talking about the story is easily done within a few lines since it’s essentially about two corrupt cops that are bound and determined to do whatever it takes to bring down a man that apparently can’t be touched by the law while getting what they need in the same place.

Bashing the movie isn’t necessary, but explaining how it appears to thrive on the broken pace that is felt as the feature moves forward is bound to be taken as a matter of opinion. Some folks are bound to like this movie thanks to the actors, others might enjoy the action, and some will end up liking the overall story. Personally, it’s not that bad of a story, but it feels broken in a way that needs to be resolved with a few simple tweaks that might be able to bring it back into line. But then again, a broken story is a matter of perception that needs to be taken as-is sometimes.

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A lover of great stories and epic tales, Tom is a fan of old and new-school ideas. As a novelist and a screenwriter, he enjoys promoting one story or another. With 18k+ articles and 40 novels written, Tom knows a little something about storytelling.

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War on Everyone

3 out of 5 stars
Recommended

Time Out says

A patchy black comedy thriller from the director of Calvary

McDonagh + America = disappointment. That’s that’s the moral of this messy, raucous dirty-cop comedy. Just as his little brother Martin followed the glorious ‘In Bruges’ with ropey Tarantino knock-off ‘Seven Psychopaths’, so John Michael McDonagh has chased his Irish masterpiece ‘Calvary’ with a noisy, funny but fatally glib and self-regarding Hollywood thriller. The setup is basically ‘Bad Lieutenant’ doubled up and packed with bantz. Alexander Skarsgård is Albuquerque cop Terry, who cruises the dusty streets with his partner Bob (Michael Peña) robbing drug dealers, blackmailing criminals and gleefully insulting everyone they encounter. There’s a hardass lieutenant (Paul Reiser) on their case and a smarmy British lord (Theo James) with evil designs, but it’s all just one big, dirty game to Terry and Bob (that they have the same names as 'The Likely Lads' can't be a coincidence, can it?).

It doesn’t help that ‘War on Everyone’ comes hard on the heels of ‘The Nice Guys’, a film that took a similar formula and spun it for bigger laughs and much deeper emotional resonance. The casting, too, is dubious. Peña (‘End of Watch’) is a riot – this is the role he’s been after for years – but Skarsgård is a dry, sneering foil, and James is dull as the villain.

McDonagh’s plot is intentionally rambling, taking scenic detours to grotty bars, racing stables and, rather wonderfully, Iceland. His dialogue is often hilarious and strangely poetic (‘I always wondered, if you hit a mime, does he make a sound?’). But it’s all so painfully postmodern, with a tacky, irritating habit of critiquing itself at every turn (‘You ain’t got a good script, you ain’t got shit’). After the bruising honesty of ‘Calvary’, it’s probably not surprising that McDonagh felt the urge to cut loose a little and make a movie with few ambitions beyond cheap violence and filthy laughs. Let’s just hope he’s got it out of his system.

Release Details

Release date: Friday 7 October 2016
Duration: 98 mins

Cast and crew

Director: John Michael McDonagh
Screenwriter: John Michael McDonagh
Michael Peña
Alexander Skarsgard

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War on Everyone

WAR ON EVERYONE (UK/16/98mins) Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Michael Pena, Theo James, Tessa Thompson, Caleb Landry Jones THE PLOT: Corrupt cops Terry (Alexander Skarsgard) and Bob (Michael Pena) celebrate their return from suspension by getting back to their old ways of extortion, bribery and generally breaking every law they can. When they cross paths with Lord Mangan (Theo James) however, it seems they have finally met their match. THE VERDICT: After a turn toward drama with ‘Calvary’, John Michael McDonagh returns to drug fuelled comedy with War on Everyone; his first film not to be shot in Ireland or star Brendan Gleeson. Although McDonagh tries his best to make this absurd and over the top comedy work, the final result is puerile, offensive and unfunny. Alexander Skarsgard leads the cast here as the vile and racist Terry. Walking with a hunch for much of the film, Skarsgard tries his best to make his double act with Michael Pena work, but since neither one takes the role of the straight man, and both try to be as offensive, racist and misogynistic as possible, this rarely works. Theo James plays an equally repellent character in Lord James Mangan, and succeeds in making the audience root against him, and Caleb Landry Jones plays Birdwell, a character who looks as though he was rejected from The Kinks and speaks almost unintelligibly. The rest of the cast features Tessa Thompson, David Wilmot, Malcolm Barrett, Derrick Barry and Keith Jardine. The screenplay, written by John Michael McDonagh is, quite frankly, a mess. The only motivation for the characters appears to be the fact that they can get away with being abhorrent and racist, and although the film tries to be an equal opportunities offender – racist, misogynistic, homophobic and violent – the fact that the characters get away with being horrific human beings implies that their actions are OK and should be accepted. The dialogue is peppered with insults throughout, which start off as mildly amusing but quickly become tiresome. The story of the film is unintelligible, with drug dealing, murder and child abuse cropping up but barely being explored, so as well as being objectionable, the film makes little sense. As director, McDonagh seems to have been inspired by music, and there are times when this works very well in the film – especially the John Cena Walkout Theme and Rhinestone Cowboy – but musical montages do not make for a strong film. Add to this explosions of violence and scenes that seem to have been inserted just for the sake of a joke – including a whole subplot of a trip to Reykjavik – which undermines the attempts at story throughout the film. As well as this, the pacing is a mess, characters are never truly explained and subplots are muddled and unclear. In all, ‘War on Everyone’ is an objectionable film about corrupt cops. The film is puerile, tiresome and unfunny, although it tries valiantly to be a comedy. None of the cast particularly deliver and the pacing, story and delivery are a mess. ‘War on Everyone’ should have been McDonagh’s return to form, but is more disjointed and messy than ‘Calvary’, and that’s saying something. RATING: 1/5 Review by Brogen Hayes

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ on VOD, in Which Guy Ritchie Directs A Fictional Spin on a Real-Life WWII Era Secret Spy Mission

Where to stream:.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Guy Ritchie

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Is ‘the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare’ streaming on netflix or hbo max, eiza gonzález tells drew barrymore she learned german song “5 minutes before filming” guy ritchie’s ‘the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare’: “it was crazy”, will there be a ‘the gentlemen’ season 2 on netflix.

Guy Ritchie has quietly become one of the current cinema’s most productive filmmakers: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare ( now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ) is his sixth film in as many years, with several projects in the pipeline. On one hand, there’s no denying his capacity for slick craftsmanship; on the other, it may test our own capacity for flashy montages and irascible banter. Henry Cavill, one of Richie’s mainstay stars (Jason Statham must’ve been otherwise occupied, a dentist appointment or some PTO maybe), anchors this seafaring adventure very extremely loosely based on Operation Postmaster, a real-life World War II secret mission in which a small cadre of British soldiers endeavored to cripple a Nazi submarine base in Western Africa. Witty wisecracks, things blowing up, Nazis getting knifed – do we need anything more? The answer to that is a firm maybe.

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The first title card bellows, BASED ON A TRUE STORY . (Which makes this a BOATS movie with actual boats!) The second one says this is based on events culled from the files of Winston Churchill himself, declassified in 2016. The third one puts us on the Atlantic Ocean in Nazi-controlled waters in 1942, where the Nazi navy prepares to board a small fishing vessel. Two men are on board: Gus March-Phillips, played by Cavill with some rip-roaring mustaches, and if you’re wondering what makes “mustaches” different than “a mustache,” well, it has to do with the mustache leaping out and curling away from quite a mighty beard. The other is Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson of the Reacher TV series ), who’s so ripped, it looks like he can juggle sperm whales. As the Nazis are all like PLEASE PRESENT YOUR PAPERS they’re all acting drunk, like OK WHATEVER HA HA HA, and, go figure, the head Nazi proves to not have much of a sense of humor. The rest of the scene goes poorly for the Nazis, because Gus and Anders’ pals are hiding in the hull and they start gunning down the boarding party as another pal plants bombs on the Nazi ship, sending it into the murky deeps.

How did this plan come together? Well, it wouldn’t be a Guy Ritchie movie without a time hop to 25 DAYS EARLIER, when Gus was pulled from a prison for extra-dangerous men and given a suicide mission by the British brass: There’s this Nazi base on the island of Fernando Po, through which all the supplies for the German u-boat fleet are funneled. Those u-boats are a real pain in the ass, with their sneaky underwater travel and nasty ship-sinking torpedoes; they’re such an advantage, the Nazis have the Brits up against the ropes. Gus would be doing his country a big solid if he could assemble a crew and sneak in, blow up the supply stores and cripple the fleet. So Gus recruits Anders – nickname: The Danish Hammer – and a couple other ne’er-do-wells (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Henry Golding) to help spring another ne’er-do-well (Alex Pettyfer) from a German prison to bolster their ranks, and so the movie has a key action set piece early on, thus tiding us over until the big one at the end.

This mission is so illegal and hush-hush, only a few irritating military bureaucrats are in on it, under the orders of Churchill himself (Rory Kinnear, piled with prosthetics); if a different set of irritating military bureaucrats find out about it, Churchill might even be ousted as Prime Minister. So, hey, no pressure. Meanwhile, two other spies aid the mission on the island: African casino owner Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) will throw a big party to distract the bad guys, and chanteuse Marjorie Stewart (Elza Gonzalez) hopes Nazi commander Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger, who was also in Inglourious Basterds ) will be so hypnotized by some sideboob, he won’t know the base is under attack until it’s too late. If Gus and co. blow it, they’ll end up tortured by the Nazis. If they succeed, they’ll probably end up back in the British brig. But hey, at least they get another shot at doing what they do best: Walking nonchalantly away from explosions in slow motion.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ritchie has always been accused of being a Tarantino acolyte, and this movie could easily be renamed Guy Ritchie’s Incongruous S.O.B.s . It also brings to mind bits of Dunkirk and Darkest Hour .

Performance Worth Watching: A too-many-characters problem leads to a movie full of anonymous performances. I guess Ritchson shows the occasional flash of charisma that makes you want to root for his towering-block-of-muscle to kill Nazis with oodles of gusto.

Memorable Dialogue: In the opening scene, Gus jokingly urges the Nazi naval dorks to punish Anders: “Make him walk the plank. He loves wood!”

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: There’s no arguing against Ritchie’s skills as a visual stylist who can streamline an overcomplicated narrative into a rollicking adventure. And while he’s pretty much going through the motions with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare , he’s nevertheless a distinctive filmmaker who stands a cut above most action-movie directors; his action sequences are always well thought-out and keenly choreographed, his edits amplifying movement instead of cutting it up into rapid-fire shards. This film, like every film he makes, has undeniable energy. It moves with intent and purpose.

Ritchie’’s intent is to entertain us, and Ministry just reaches that baseline goal. His purpose, though, is remarkably unambitious – to get to the end of the movie. Sure, we get a handful of laughs from the snarky dialogue and Anders’ OTT brutality (he’s a helluva archer), and the action is slickly executed, but it’s in the service of a movie that has nothing to say about anything whatsoever except, I guess, hooray for these unsung heroes of WWII, even though they were probably nothing like this at all . Maybe that’s the film’s central joke? Granted, Ritchie’s movies are frequently about little more than their own twisty storytelling and visual flair, but this one’s relatively stripped down (the montages and time hops are kept to a minimum) and lacks a magnetic central protagonist (Ritchie’s recent totally acceptable outings Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune at least gave us Jason Statham as a focal point). The irony here is undeniable: It feels like Ritchie’s playing it safe with a movie about guys who break the rules to get the job done.

Our Call: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is perfectly acceptable disposable entertainment, but you’ll want to SKIP IT until you can watch it for free on a streaming service.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Screen Rant

This 94-year-old war movie has been remade twice - but still hasn't been bettered.

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Why All Quiet On The Western Front Book & Original Movie Were Banned

All quiet on the western front book vs. movie: biggest differences, 10 complicated movies that people pretend to understand (but really don't).

All Quiet On The Western Front is a powerful anti-war film that sheds light on the brutal realities of World War I.
The 1930 adaptation received heavy criticism for its anti-war message but won 2 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The 1979 and 2022 remakes were both critically praised but did not reach the same level of success as the original.

The war drama All Quiet On The Western Front has seen three movie adaptations, with the first released 94 years ago. Based on the 1929 book by Erich Maria Remarque, the story follows a group of young German schoolboys who are encouraged to enlist in the war by their teacher. But once they enter the battleground, they are introduced to the harsh realities of war and must muster up all of their strength if they wish to have any hope of survival; All Quiet On The Western Front was one of the first anti-war films released in history.

The book and 1930 film received heavy criticism due to their dark depictions of war; the movie was also banned in France until 1963 for its anti-war messages directed towards audiences. Despite the controversies, All Quiet On The Western Front was highly praised, winning 2 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and is often regarded as one of the greatest war films ever made . Since its release in 1930, the movie has been remade twice , with both remakes being critically and commercially successful, but not quite on the same level as the original.

Despite garnering critical acclaim, both the original novel and 1930 film version of All Quiet on the Western Front were banned in several countries.

All Quiet On The Western Front's Two Remakes Explained

The two remakes were released in 1979 and 2022.

The first remake of All Quiet on the Western Front was released in 1979 as a television movie. Directed by Delbert Mann, the 1979 movie starred Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine as a joint production between the United States and the United Kingdom; it was later edited and received a worldwide theatrical release. The 1979 movie was well-received by critics and audiences, winning the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Made For Television and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Filming Editing; the cast was also highly praised with Ernest Borgnine and Patricia Neal receiving Emmy nominations for their performances.

The second remake was released theatrically in 2022, directed by Edward Berger; unlike the previous versions filmed in English, the 2022 remake was filmed in German starring Felix Kammerer and Albrecht Schuch. The 2022 movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was later released on Netflix; it received slight criticism for its deviations from the original novel and the changes made to the ending. Despite the criticism, 2022's All Quiet on the Western Front was still received well worldwide and won 4 Academy Awards, including Best International Feature Film, and 7 British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film .

Netflix’s All Quiet On The Western Front generally stays true to its book source material, but the movie still makes some notable changes.

Why The Original All Quiet On The Western Front Is Still The Best

The original movie contained a powerful anti-war message to viewers.

All three movie versions of All Quiet on the Western Front were released to high critical reviews. Both remakes were considered excellent adaptations of Remarque's novel, with each receiving individual acclaim; the 1979 movie received praise for its locations, editing, and performances, while the 2022 version won awards for its cinematography and musical score (via MovieWeb ). However, while both remakes offer stunning takes on the novel, they are outranked by the 1930 movie for several reasons.

The 1930 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front offered a bleak and realistic view into the dark realities of war; it was released only 12 years after the end of World War I and was one of the first movies to offer such a gruesome depiction of life in the trenches. It was released at a time when another war was close on the horizon and offered a powerful message about the realities of war to viewers (via Legion Magazine ). The first movie to win both Best Picture and Best Director at the Oscars, the 1930 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front offered a profound and brutal reflection on the realities of war and serves as the best adaptation of Remarque's acclaimed novel.

Sources: MovieWeb , Legion Magazine

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

IMAGES

War on Everyone Review
'War on Everyone' Movie Review
War on Everyone Teaser Poster |Teaser Trailer
War On Everyone Movie Review (2016)
REVIEW: War on Everyone
Movie Review: War On Everyone

VIDEO

GUYS TODAY IS GUILD WAR EVERYONE SCORE UP TO 100+👌😬 #shots #freefire #guildwar
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War on Everyone

COMMENTS

Dirty Cops
Rated: 4/5 Nov 16, 2017 Full Review Leah Greenblatt Entertainment Weekly Crass, senseless, and relentlessly talky, War on Everyone mostly seems like a movie at war with itself.
War on Everyone movie review & film summary (2017)
War on Everyone. Something terrible must have happened to John Michael McDonagh, the screenwriter and director, after he made " Calvary .". That 2014 movie, a darkly comic murder mystery and a relentlessly but purposefully morbid exploration of mortality and faith, made me pretty eager to see whatever its creator had up his sleeve next. But ...
War on Everyone (2016)
War on Everyone: Directed by John Michael McDonagh. With Alexander Skarsgård, Michael Peña, Theo James, Tessa Thompson. Two corrupt cops set out to blackmail and frame every criminal unfortunate enough to cross their path. Events, however, are complicated by the arrival of someone who appears to be even more dangerous than they are.
'War on Everyone' Review: An American Cop Movie, Through Irish Eyes
Film Review: 'War on Everyone'. John Michael McDonagh delivers an American cop movie through Irish eyes, satirizing what passes for the law in the United States. By Peter Debruge. Courtesy of ...
War on Everyone review
The third film from John Michael McDonagh ( The Guard, Calvary) is bitingly funny and unapologetically offensive. Terry Monroe ( Alexander Skarsgård) and Bob Bolaño (Michael Peña) are a pair of ...
War on Everyone
War on Everyone is a 2016 British black comedy buddy cop film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh.The film stars Alexander Skarsgård, Michael Peña, and Theo James.Set and filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it was screened in the Panorama section of the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 7 October 2016 through Icon ...
'War on Everyone' Movie Review
'War on Everyone' Review: Buddy-Cop Comedy Gets High on Retro Bad-Boy Supply Tarantinoesque tale of corrupt cops brings the sex, violence, bromantic chemistry and lots of too-cool-for-film ...
War on Everyone review
War on Everyone's plot swings on a bank robbery the cops want a cut of. It's being done by a crew in the pay of a British lord with a deviant streak (Theo James) and his foppish sidekick ...
Review
What's this? War on Everyone is a film about two corrupt policemen and the mess they get into when they take their bribery down a new direction.. Sounds like the kind of film we've seen before. You know I've read another review where the film was described as "the thinking person's Bad Boys"…I guess because this one isn't about gratuitous macho posturing and explosions, but ...
War on Everyone: EW review
War on Everyone : EW review. Somewhere in the next 100 minutes, there's also a "Rhinestone Cowboy" dance sequence, a quick detour to Iceland, about 4,000 face punches, and a desert soliloquy ...
War on Everyone
Mixed or Average Based on 21 Critic Reviews. 50. 33% Positive 7 Reviews. 48% Mixed 10 Reviews. 19% Negative 4 Reviews. All Reviews; Positive Reviews ... War on Everyone mostly seems like a movie at war with itself. Read More By Leah Greenblatt FULL REVIEW. 58. Consequence Jan 31, 2017 McDonagh seems to have more to say in this film, but it's ...
War on Everyone (2016)
'WAR ON EVERYONE': Four and a Half Stars (Out of Five) The new action-comedy buddy cop flick from writer/director John Michael McDonagh (who also helmed the 2011 buddy cop film 'THE GUARD', and the 2014 catholic priest dramatic thriller 'CALVARY'). This one stars Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard as two crooked cops that constantly blackmail and frame criminals, in New Mexico, that get in ...
Review: A snarky, self-conscious cop thriller wages 'War on Everyone'
Like so many crime movies conceived in the post-Quentin Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie era, "War on Everyone" is a breezily impudent postmodern object — a fast and ferocious pileup of highbrow ...
War On Everyone review
Everyone else - the weak, the fat, the bald, the short, the ugly, the foreign, the disabled - are of no consequence. If this is the true meaning behind the movie's title, then War On ...
Review: 'War on Everyone' Is Missing Some Crucial Components
War on Everyone. Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Action, Comedy. R. 1h 38m. By Manohla Dargis. Feb. 2, 2017. Squealing tires, firing guns, free-floating nihilism and an occasional look-at-me ...
War On Everyone Review
War On Everyone is a spin on maybe the most hackneyed genre of them all, the buddy-cop movie. The customary tropes are all in place: Terry and Bob ride around in their ice-blue Monte Carlo coupe ...
Movie Review
War on Everyone, 2016.. Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Starring Michael Pena, Alexander Skarsgard, Theo James, Tessa Thompson, Stephanie Sigman, Caleb Landry Jones, Malcolm Barrett, David ...
Movie Review: "War on Everyone"
I'm such a huge fan of both of the McDonagh boys — playwright turned writer-director Martin ("In Bruges", "Seven Psychopaths") and his brother John Michael ("Calvary," "The Guard") that I'm willing to write-off "War on Everyone" as a pastiche that didn't pay off.. It's written and directed by John Michael McDonagh as a send-up of Quentin Tarantino, sort of a QT ...
Movie Review: War on Everyone
Movie Review: War on Everyone . Tom Foster Updated Mar 17, 2022 . Movies about corrupt cops are usually highly dramatic and action-packed affairs. But one thing they usually depict is a cop, or ...
War on Everyone 2016, directed by John Michael McDonagh
McDonagh's plot is intentionally rambling, taking scenic detours to grotty bars, racing stables and, rather wonderfully, Iceland. His dialogue is often hilarious and strangely poetic ('I ...
War on Everyone Movie Review
War on Everyone Movie Review Alexander Skarsgård & Michael Peña (r) star in War on Everyone: We Are the Police! Rotten Tomatoes Plot: Terry (Alexander Skarsgård) and Bob (Michael Peña) are two crooked cops who frame and blackmail criminals all over town.
War on Everyone
THE VERDICT: After a turn toward drama with 'Calvary', John Michael McDonagh returns to drug fuelled comedy with War on Everyone; his first film not to be shot in Ireland or star Brendan Gleeson. Although McDonagh tries his best to make this absurd and over the top comedy work, the final result is puerile, offensive and unfunny.
Guy Ritchie 'The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare' Streaming Movie
Well, it wouldn't be a Guy Ritchie movie without a time hop to 25 DAYS EARLIER, when Gus was pulled from a prison for extra-dangerous men and given a suicide mission by the British brass: There ...
This 94-Year-Old War Movie Has Been Remade Twice
All three movie versions of All Quiet on the Western Front were released to high critical reviews.Both remakes were considered excellent adaptations of Remarque's novel, with each receiving individual acclaim; the 1979 movie received praise for its locations, editing, and performances, while the 2022 version won awards for its cinematography and musical score (via MovieWeb).

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Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Panorama), Feb. 12, 2016. Running time: 98 MIN.

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War on Everyone review – bad cop, bad cop on the trail of a plot

Comments (…)

Review | War on Everyone

What’s this?

Sounds like the kind of film we’ve seen before

Okay, you liked the style. But what about the story?

Funny, I’ve heard that McDonagh writes about offensive loudmouths.

Didn’t he make In Bruges as well?

And who was in War on Everyone ?

So was it funny, exciting or what?

Not everyone found it so satisfying, though, did they?

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Article by Alix Turner

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