Popular reviews

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  Review by Dan Pendleton ★ 3

  Well that was a bit of a mess, wasn't it?  This film just didn't know what it wanted to be.  Tonally it was all over the place, it suffered from pacing issues, and the comedy didn't land at all.  The script was an absolute mess and the story was quite incoherent with pointless plot threads sprouting from nowhere.  I didn't buy the chemistry between Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña and couldn't care less about either character.  The editing was atrocious, particularly at the start, and it made all the characters seem really awkward (almost like someone had removed the canned laughter from a cheesy 70's sitcom but you can still see the actors waiting before continuing their lines).  And is it just me or did Alexander Skarsdård remind anyone else of Freddie Flintoff?  That's all I could picture throughout the entire film.  There was nothing to take away from this film but sheer disappointment.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★

  Finally someone interrogates the dumb masculinity and dubious moral systems of buddy cop/crime movies (and Ugly Americanism at large) simply by self-consciously exaggerating that stuff. Lot of soft targets here, pretty lazy and smug.

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  Review by Danny B ★ 8

  War on Everyone is pathetic, vulgar, tasteless garbage that tries so hard to offend it's childish. Everything about this film is unlikable. This film was purely written to hate and offend everyone. If you're a man, woman, child, of a foreign ethnicity, transgender, gay, straight, overweight or just a human being. War on Everyone tries its very hardest to include a joke that offends you.

  Directed by John Michael McDonagh (The Guard and Calvary. Two much better films), War on Everyone tells the incoherent story of two corrupt cops in New Mexico played by Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard. They get involved in a robbery where $1 million goes missing and they blackmail, beat and abuse their power in order…

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★½ 3

  Hype and anticipation for a film can sometimes leave you with expectations that simply cannot be met. Director John Michael McDonagh delivered two films of utter quality in 2011's The Guard and 2014's Calvary, among my absolute favourites of the decade, and because of that my anticipation for his next project was heightened considerably. Both those films had starred the mercurial Brendan Gleeson, a truly incredible actor, and even though McDonagh's new film had vacated Ireland where his two previous films had been set, the cast and premise of War On Everyone still had me stoked. My first viewing however had left me underwhelmed, but just like his brother's films, I reckoned this might just work better for me on…

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  Review by Travis Lytle ★★★

  John Michael McDonagh's "The War on Everyone" may be a better plot away from being great. The comedy about two cops and crime ring features smart dialogue, personality-rich characters, and appealing performances; storywise, however, the film offers little more than perfunctory crime movie threads. With Michael Peña, Alexander Skarsgård, and Tessa Thompson at his disposal, McDonagh puts something enjoyable together and builds a neatly shot, capably energetic comedy drenched in Albuquerque sunshine, dark-tinged humor, and some genuine heart. Its narrative may be soggy and routine, but the work does not fail to engage.

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  Review by Jay D 's Watching ★★½

  Still can't quite decide if this is a good movie disguised as a bad one, or a bad movie disguised as a good one, if that makes sense.

  (Although I'm pretty certain that Caleb Landry Jones' Russell Birdwell is the most loathsome character he's played in a short career filled with scuzzy personalities)

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  Review by Dawson Joyce ★★★½

  War on Everyone benefits from the sharp dialogue, hilarious characters, brutal violence, strong performances, and energetic pacing viewers would expect from a film by one of the McDonagh brothers, but while it's solid, it's not quite as good as it could've been, as it's hard not to shake the feeling that it doesn't seem to know exactly what kind of film it wants to be.

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  Review by Robin ★★★

  Alexander Skarsgård stands like there's a ceiling right above his head and he's trying to avoid bumping into it AGAIN

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  Review by sayfe ★

  dream blunt rotation with alexander skarsgård and theo james but i’m the blunt

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  Review by Paul Anthony Cassidy ★★★½

  An eccentric fantasy set in present-day New Mexico from director John Michael McDonagh.
  Michael Peña and Alexander Skarsgård star as corrupt Albuquerque police force Detectives Bob Bolaño and Terry Monroe who are no strangers to shaking down criminals and accepting bribes which allows them to lead a far more lavish lifestyle than a law enforcement officers salary would normally provide.
  Both appear relatively fearless to the point of apathy about any potential consequences and Monroe leads a rather bohemian alcohol and drug-fuelled lifestyle whilst Bolaño, the more reserved of the two, seems somewhat satisfied with his wife, two kids and house in the 'burbs.
  Whilst providing surveillance on a local criminal they are planning to extort the two come across…

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  Review by Bettie ★½

  As a Caleb-Landry-Jones-filmography-completist I sometimes have to suffer for my cause

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  Review by Connor Carey ★★½

  Entertaining and funny enough, but I was overall very underwhelmed with "War on Everyone". It's uneven tone, incoherent plot, and unlikable and underdeveloped leads held this back from being anything more than just entertaining. As a fan of John Michael McDonagh's last film, this left me pretty disappointed.