The Mosquito Bowl

Check out my full review @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/the-mosquito-bowl-movie-review-a-violent-well-acted-war-drama-that-sidelines-its-own-game/ Rating: C+ THE MOSQUITO BOWL works fine as a formulaic war flick, but it had the potential for much more. Peter Berg’s combat sequences are brutal, bloody, and relentless, and the sound design and cinematography do great work. The camaraderie built through football is its strongest element, along with a message I personally love about the sport being infinitely better than war. Ray Nicholson is the standout, Bill Skarsgård and Tom Francis are really good company, and Nicholas Galitzine’s restraint deserved better writing. The characters lack any real arcs, and the forced attempts to make us care about them individually fall entirely flat. The story is as generic as they come, the title game is weirdly sidelined, and the decontextualized Japanese executions feel superpatriotic. I believed in these men as a group. I just wish the movie had bothered to get to know any of them.