Peter Berg’s latest feature, The Mosquito Bowl, follows a few boys in a boat heading for a tense destination and a muddled finish line. It is hard to say, however, whether to consider his script with Mark L. Smith more complimentary than that George Clooney-helmed rowing drama. Both were works Smith adapted from dense historical nonfiction, and both seemed to miss the mark, and inevitably drag the director’s sense of execution along with. With this story of 20-somethings facing an insurmountable conflict away from cozy comforts, Berg encounters a new low. And that’s even with his natural mechanics finding practical application, until he forgets where/what to utilize.
His return to a football story ought to have equaled a back-to-basics threshold where the fundamentals win the moment. They happened so organically in Friday Night Lights, and now they’re reduced to merely stringing plot devices together. A far cry from what I suspect was a far more captivating Buzz Bissinger novel itemizing a scrappy bunch of leatherheads who believed in both service and sport.
Four recent college grads, star players at their campuses – John McLaughry (Nicholas Galitzine), Bob Baumann (Bill Skarsgård), Tony Butkovich (Ray Nicholson), George Murphy (Brent Comer), and Dave Schreiner (Tom Francis)- all have their careers ahead of them when one draft bugle sounds after Pearl Harbor, and not the one signaling a professional contract. They’re great friends, upstanding family men, committed to their country. All three pillars would make them emotionally underqualified to upend their lives and join the Marine contingent in Japan. Yet they still prove themselves worthy of this test of stamina and maturity. All while training on Parris Island, playing on a makeshift gridiron in Guadalcanal, and running along the shores of Okinawa in a historic final offensive.
Berg’s knowledge of the game, paired with the strategic parallels between a fair game of tackle and forest recon, set the framework for his quintet. But they are still no less vulnerable over four quarters of strenuous activity. One wishes the viewer weren’t equally exerting themselves just watching, with Berg leading on both sides of the camera; in front, he infrequently strolls in as a random sergeant possessing the same divisive presence as Pat McAfee as a shout-happy drill instructor.
In this Mosquito Bowl, named just so after a goodwill game played amongst two co-mingling battalions ahead of the polarizing Okinawa battle, Berg’s priorities are unidentifiable and misguided, unable to latch onto the subject of sport or war for long, let alone emphasize the virtue of personal conflict, or that sense of practical application. Whatever he thinks fits together as puzzle pieces sorely lacks cohesion. And any attempt to return to the visceral stakes of Lone Survivor, infusing a dash of Oliver Stone-esque realism, comes off as cringingly underwhelming. Only in sputters does actual football align with that wartime gruesomeness. The latter ultimately takes over, speaking loudly with very little to say.
The real combat sequences hold steady in his wheelhouse of intensity and pain during close-ups and handheld observances. Berg and his DP Jacques Jouffret (Gran Turismo) make every beat impossible to ignore, despite a drab, period-inaccurate color palette. Berg’s idea of grit fills these sequences with ease, quick to the draw in conveying opportunities for carnage and triumph, separation and reunion, and unchallenged team unity. It’s still his unique form of captivation, further boosted by Wylie Stateman’s aggressive sound design (the lone justification for experiencing this film in a theater), and a pensive-yet-hopeful, guitar-heavy score by Explosions in the Sky members Michael James and Munaf Rayani. That arc still can’t avoid its fixed position on a remote island, unable to connect with anything nearby. Whether it was Smith’s eye for character struggle or Berg’s way with buzzwords to anchor his ensemble with the gumption they had left behind.
This director has made a stray turkey once or twice, but never one that winds up in the middle of an outright identity crisis. Whatever seems engaging is only at face value, and it’d be far worse without his cast making the most of inadequate, adrenaline-spurred material that still lands flat in the dirt. It’s not apathetic, but even when it eventually knows which tone to nudge the real-life burden of war, and the moral or humanist ideals it pushes, that disjointedness puts it out of shape. Both Galitzine and Skarsgård stand out among this militarized crew, the sly ones who escape the most rattled and humbled. They too are wasted on this paper-thin material. All parties involved must think scratching the surface of a character’s home life or personal aspirations can secure likability. That couldn’t be further from reality.
And for a film that inevitably makes its source material more adventurous, expecting much from a director with a knack for heavy drama was, just this once, a fool’s errand. Bugs may bite more than a serviceable plot ever could in The Mosquito Bowl. Not only would that be a simple shame on Berg’s part, but it is also perhaps a disservice to his integrity and the true-life events on-screen. It couldn’t be faulted for not trying, as it is a firm sensory exercise anchored by above-grade acting. Once those pieces enter an actual warzone, its grip on the ball might be steady, albeit utterly directionless, missing a clear or viable path to the endzone. Points for effort, but none extra for nonexistent depth or clarity. (4/10)