The Great­est Beer Run Ever

Like Green Book, Peter Farrelly’s The Great­est Beer Run Ever is based on a true friend­ship, cen­tring on John ​“Chick­ie” Dono­hue (Zac Efron) of uptown Man­hat­tan, who over the win­ter of 1967 – 68 hopped a mer­chant freighter to Viet­nam, inspired to vis­it the boys from the neigh­bour­hood who were then sta­tioned there, and give them beer as a show of patri­ot­ic support.

His odyssey, as recount­ed in a self-pub­lished book with sup­port­ing evi­dence in the form of some pho­tos and inter­views with the drink­ing bud­dies, is a tale of guff and guile, involv­ing turn­ing up at an MP base, talk­ing his way onto the front lines at Khe San, run­ning into an old friend on the road, and shel­ter­ing in Saigon dur­ing the Tet Offensive.

“For half a cen­tu­ry, I’ve been told I was full of it, to the point where I stopped even telling this sto­ry,” Dono­hue told the New York Times short­ly after the book’s release. The paper’s reporter con­tin­ued: ​“It was the ulti­mate saloon tale: Mr Dono­hue has told it in many New York City bars. But oth­ers – friends, strangers, even some rel­a­tives – called it a tale too tall even for Mr Donohue.”

The film doesn’t have the detail or imag­i­na­tion to fill in the gaps of a well-worn sto­ry with any­thing con­vinc­ing. Evi­dent­ly a local­ly noto­ri­ous charm­ing fuck­up, Chick­ie nev­er has to turn the charm up to 11 or bull­shit his way into sit­u­a­tions – a run­ning gag that every­one he meets assumes he’s C.I.A. is a smart idea, but under­cooked – thanks to a script strung togeth­er from fric­tion­less you-going-my-way con­trivances and embell­ished with fad­ed local colour, like jad­ed jour­nal­ists or sin­gle dis­tant flash­es of cgi napalm, half-remem­bered by the film­mak­ers from old­er, bet­ter Viet­nam movies.

Beer Run is filmed in stilt­ed, over­lit mas­ter and two shots that empha­sise rather than work around the under­pop­u­lat­ed, under­dressed back­grounds and cheat­ed or cheap­ly built loca­tions. Chick­ie spends a night in the dri­est fox­hole you’ve ever seen. Imag­ine that the pro­duc­tion design depart­ment of a ​’90s net­work sit­com had a day to build a jun­gle set for a 45-sec­ond war flash­back scene. Now imag­ine that scene at fea­ture length.

The block­ing seems to have been no more elab­o­rate than ​“I dun­no… stand around,” and it’s fun to imag­ine the inter­view process by which the craft depart­ments were hired: ​“You seen Full Met­al Jack­et?” ​“Yeah, like, in high school.” ​“You’ve got the job!”

Film schools should show their stu­dents Beer Run’s Saigon street scenes, not par­tic­u­lar­ly teem­ing with scoot­ers and mer­chant stalls, to demon­strate how ADs chore­o­graph back­ground action to give shots a nat­u­ral­is­tic dynamism. Or how, some­times, they don’t do that at all. What could have pos­si­bly giv­en Far­rel­ly the con­fi­dence to think he could direct a bat­tle scene when he can’t even direct traffic?

Zac Efron, in a madras shirt and man­ly mous­tache based close­ly on old pho­tos of Dono­hue, has the tools to give a very good per­for­mance in this role. He’s got the right gruff voice for lay­er­ing an Irish union guy’s good-time pat­ter over his inse­cu­ri­ties, but vac­il­lates in tone between the bluffer’s con­fi­dence of an ​’80s frat house com­e­dy star, and fight­ing for his life. He seems con­fused about the genre of the movie he’s in – which is total­ly understandable.

The over­all tone is banter‑y and light­weight, with pla­toon-movie oldies laid on indis­crim­i­nate­ly and dia­logue out of NBC’s The ​’60s minis­eries to con­vey Chickie’s dawn­ing polit­i­cal con­science and belief that the best way to sup­port the troops is to bring them home.

The Great­est Beer Run Ever reca­pit­u­lates the old saw about the Viet­nam War rep­re­sent­ing America’s loss of inno­cence, leav­ened this time with some mus­ings on the true mean­ing of friend­ship. (There are also some very soft-touch acknowl­edg­ments that the ser­vice­men Chick­ie was vis­it­ing were on to hard­er stuff than beer, and that Amer­i­can sol­diers were not the war’s only victims.)

The film suc­ceeds, at least, in mak­ing you feel like you’ve lis­tened to a two-hour ​’Nam sto­ry from a guy who vis­it­ed there once.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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