Alan Ritchson is best known for playing Jack Reacher in the stunt-heavy, action-packed hit Prime Video series... but playing 81 in Netflix's War Machine proved to be a much bigger, and unexpected feat.
"I had finished shooting Reacher season three, the whole season was this build up towards this fight with the giant Olivier Richters...he's 7'2, 400 pounds," Ritchson tells GamesRadar+. "And we spent three weeks filming this entire episode where we just fought continuously. The reference was like a Family Guy episode where Peter's fighting the chicken or whatever, and it goes on forever. I thought when I left that season that I had just shot the hardest piece of IP that I'd ever work on, until I went into War Machine... and every day was a unique kind of physical challenge [that] left me drained in the best way. I think War Machine took it to another level, for sure."
Directed by Patrick Hughes, War Machine stars Ritchson as a U.S. Army Ranger known only as 81, who is reluctantly tasked with leading his squad of hopeful trainees in a sort of war of the worlds. What's supposed to be the final exercise in their rigorous training camp turns into a fight for survival against an unimaginable (and alien) threat.
The cast includes Dennis Quaid, Stephan James, Jai Courtney, Esai Morales, Blake Richardson, Keiynan Lonsdale, and Daniel Webber.
Reacher is a similar role in that Jack is a former Military Police Officer who kicks butt, fights off deadly foes, and does it all while still looking good and getting ladies (despite being emotionally unavailable and a bit, uh, off, to say the least). Ritchson's Ranger in War Machine is motivated by trauma, and to fulfill a promise he made to the person he cared about most... making the upcoming sci-fi pic both physically and emotionally demanding.
War Machine lands on Netflix on March 6. For more, check out our picks for the best sci-fi movies of all time.
