Netflix’s sci-fi action throwback War Machine had a grueling shoot. Director and co-writer Patrick Hughes started the action on “day one, take one, shot one” with a bruising sequence where he blew 12 performers off a cliff and down a rugged, rock-strewn hill. Over nearly three months of production, his star, Reacher and Fast X’s Alan Ritchson, had to swim through Class V rapids, cross a river hand-over-hand via a rope traverse, get violently rattled around inside a simulated armored vehicle, and go through many of the real steps of the U.S. Army’s demanding Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP).
For Ritchson, actually experiencing this physical gauntlet in real life, and particularly doing his own stunts wherever possible, was crucial to making the movie believable.
“I think the audience is savvy enough to know when you’re shooting the back of the head of a double, and it takes you out of the experience,” Ritchson tells Polygon. “I don’t ever want to do that. I’m capable of doing a lot of this stuff, [so] I want that. If we want to suffer with this protagonist, I think the only way to do it is that way.”
In War Machine, Ritchson plays an Army sergeant designated “81” by his RASP overseers. He and his fellow RASP finalists are in a remote mountain area for a combat simulation when aliens invade Earth. Due to the mock combat, 81 and his squad are only carrying dummy bullets, and they’re up against high-tech alien firepower. That leads to a desperate, physically demanding chase across mountains, forest, and waterways, and a long series of visibly bruising action sequences.
But Ritchson says the controlling factor for whether he’d do a given stunt or sequence himself wasn’t the difficulty or complexity of the shoot — it was the difficulty or complexity of getting a sequence insured.
“We get in a lot of arguments with insurance companies about this, — what I’m allowed to do, what’s insured and what isn’t,” Ritchson says. “And I win 99% of those arguments, just because I refuse to shoot it any other way.”
Ultimately, he says, no one action sequence or stunt was the hardest thing he faced on War Machine — the difficult part was keeping himself going for such a lengthy, physical production.
Photo: Ben King/Netflix
“This whole thing, the cumulative effect of the entire journey, was what I was up against the most,” he says. “Because there was no recovery time. If something broke me down, we were doing something more intense the next day.”
Ritchson says he came closest to his breaking point about halfway through the production, while shooting sequences where 81 goes through the RASP gauntlet over and over. “We were doing the obstacle course, and in my head, I was like, ‘Oh, I do a million pull-ups and push-ups all the time. My upper body strength and all that, I’m good.’ But there was just something so taxing about doing it over and over and over again, and having not really had a chance to recover before. So by that midpoint when we were on the obstacle course, I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to finish this movie.’”
Ritchson says the emotional side of playing the character was exhausting as well. In the movie, 81 enters the Ranger selection program to fulfill a promise to his brother, who he lost in an ambush in Afghanistan. The same attack also left 81 badly wounded, traumatized, and determined not to bond with his squad members or accept leadership duties. Over the course of War Machine, he has to come to terms with some of that damage while under fire.
Photo: Ben King/Netflix
“I’ve been told I have tinges of Method acting in me,” Ritchson says. “That’s not on purpose. I like to try to switch it on and off, but you can’t help it — when you’re inhabiting a character like this, and you’re flowing in and out of an emotional state like that, it rubs off on you. There’s a residue at the end of the day that’s not as easy to shake as I’d like, dealing with so much shame and pain.”
As a middle child with two brothers, Ritchson drew on his own sibling relationships for the role. “And I draw on whatever is similar emotionally in my own life — there’s a ton of guilt and shame there too,” he says. “So [playing a role like this] stirs up a lot, and it lives with you, as much as I would like to say that it doesn’t. That’s just part of the process.”
Still, he says, his generally lighthearted nature helps him shake off the weight of an emotional role enough to enjoy an experience like War Machine, or his current project with Hughes, an untitled Vietnam War movie about real-life Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient Michael Thornton.
“I think Patrick and I have a really good time on set,” Ritchson says. “We’re making another movie right now, and it’s serious subject matter. It’s gruesome. I think both of us just have that nature. We want to have a great time while we’re making it. Part of my job is to make sure it’s a good experience for everybody, slipping into [character] without really doing damage to the people around me. Part of the job of a real professional is being able to do your work without affecting the people around you.”
War Machine is streaming on Netflix now.
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