‘The Mosquito Bowl’ Review: Football Heroes Take to the Battlefield in Peter Berg’s Emptily Macho WWII Epic

No one familiar with the oeuvre of Peter Berg — the action merchant behind the Afghanistan war drama “Lone Survivor” and the improbably pumped-up boardgame adaptation “Battleship” — should approach “The Mosquito Bowl” expecting great restraint or good taste. Ostensibly, Berg’s Netflix-backed combat epic is fighting the same fight as Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red […] Starring Nicholas Galitzine and Bill Skarsgård, Peter Berg's WWII epic "The Mosquito Bowl" is bigger on harrowing combat scenes than characterization. This pummelling Netflix production seeks pathos amid the gunfire as it tells the true story of four college football stars joining the Marines in the wake of Pearl Harbor, but not one of these noble warriors feels like a real person.

No one familiar with the oeuvre of Peter Berg — the action merchant behind the Afghanistan war drama “Lone Survivor” and the improbably pumped-up boardgame adaptation “Battleship” — should approach “The Mosquito Bowl” expecting great restraint or good taste. Ostensibly, Berg’s Netflix-backed combat epic is fighting the same fight as Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line,” likewise charting the physical and psychological torment of American soldiers in Guadalcanal during the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. But they are two very different history lessons. There’s not