With just two feature length films to his name – The Guard and Calvary – John Michael McDonagh has established himself as a writer-director to be reckoned with. So much so, that his third movie has taken him across the pond from Ireland to New Mexico, to wage War On Everyone with Michael Pena and Alexander Skarsgard. What’s more, we now have a trailer to preview the finished product.
War On Everyone has been moving through the festival circuit for some months, and was characterized by our own Matt Donato, at this year’s SXSW, as “a pitch-black, nihilistic riot.” Such praise indicates that this movie promises the full John Michael McDonagh experience – despite the relocated setting, and the absence of stalwart collaborator, Brendan Gleeson.
The unapologetic nature of McDonagh’s vitriol, combined with the chemistry between the two leads – Pena and Skarsgard – is the big draw here, and the trailer itself confirms that nobody escapes the filmmaker’s laser-guided satire. Whether this spin on the buddy-cop movie formula is helped or hindered by a release in the same year as The Nice Guys, however, will become clear when War On Everyone arrives in UK theatres on September 30th, 2016.
