War on Everyone

The unlike­ly pair­ing of Alexan­der Skarsgård and Michael Peña proves irre­sistible in this ram­shackle crime caper from Irish writer/​director John Michael McDon­agh. They play Bob Bolaño and Ter­ry Mon­roe, a cou­ple of loose-can­non detec­tives with an unortho­dox approach to clean­ing up the streets of Albu­querque – name­ly strew­ing them with bro­ken beer bot­tles and bul­lets. ​“Let’s go fuck some scum­bags,” is how Skarsgård’s Glen Camp­bell-lov­ing cow­boy cop­per reacts when hand­ed their lat­est (and poten­tial­ly last) assign­ment: pre­vent an impend­ing race track rob­bery involv­ing a cou­ple of small-time crooks and a small cadre of unsavoury businessmen.

With its sun­ny New Mex­i­co set­ting and pseu­do-philo­soph­i­cal ban­ter between two cor­rupt pro­tag­o­nists (sure­ly the best send-up of True Detective’s Rust Cohle and Mar­ty Hart yet), War on Every­one osten­si­bly has more in com­mon with Mar­tin McDonagh’s Sev­en Psy­chopaths than John Michael’s two pre­vi­ous films, Cal­vary and The Guard. As a com­e­dy it’s cer­tain­ly less effec­tive, nev­er ful­ly con­vinc­ing as either a pas­tiche of ​’70s bud­dy cop movies or a pitch-black pro­ce­dur­al. As a piece of cin­e­mat­ic com­men­tary, how­ev­er, this is by far the more cohe­sive work – ​“these things live or die by the script” observes a local Irish reprobate/​police infor­mant while watch­ing a sub­par porno that’s all action and no plot.

As fun as it is watch­ing Bob and Ter­ry indulge in black­mail, fre­quent vis­its to strip clubs and resort to using exces­sive force wher­ev­er nec­es­sary, espe­cial­ly when it isn’t remote­ly called for, their meth­ods lend the film a slight melan­choly edge. These guys aren’t just dyed-in-the-wool mav­er­icks, cruis­ing around in a gleam­ing turquoise Oldsmo­bile Cut­lass in their pris­tine three-piece suits, sink­ing suds and scop­ing out their next sus­pect, but relics from a bygone era of US law enforce­ment where the rule­book was more or less open to interpretation.

Despite being rep­ri­mand­ed by their com­mand­ing offi­cer when­ev­er they step too far out of line, there are no real con­se­quences for their actions; if any­thing their brazen dis­re­gard of basic pro­to­col feels like a cry for help. Like a drunk­er, salti­er Starsky and Hutch, they are, in essence, hope­less­ly obsolete.

Though it does occa­sion­al­ly feel as if the sup­port­ing cast are read­ing from dif­fer­ent scripts, War on Every­one also boasts an enjoy­ably ham­my turn from Theo James as a British bad­die with an insa­tiable blood­lust, while the ever-reli­able Tes­sa Thomp­son helps redress the hor­mone imbal­ance as Terry’s lat­est squeeze. That said, it’s a shame to see Miss Bala’s Stephanie Sig­man giv­en so lit­tle to work with, and we real­ly could have done with­out Caleb Landry Jones rock­ing up doing his usu­al loose-limbed, man­nered flam­boy­ance routine.

Not an entire­ly clean kill, then, but at least the zany nar­ra­tive – a quick stopover in Ice­land appears to take Bob and Ter­ry as much by sur­prise as it does the audi­ence – throws us off the scent just long enough to keep us invest­ed in the pair’s wacky shenanigans.