On Dec. 24, 1944, Marine units on Guadalcanal played a pickup football game. Some of the players had been college stars. They were waiting for orders to invade Okinawa. Not all of the men the film follows would come home. Peter Berg has turned that game into a movie.
Berg made Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor. A football-and-war movie seemed like his lane. The Mosquito Bowl opens on the weekend of Dec. 6-7, 1941, with a montage of other news from those days. We meet Purdue fullback Tony Butkovich, Wisconsin's Dave Schreiner and Bob Baumann, and Brown's John McLaughry. Each one goes through boot camp at Parris Island and ends up in the Pacific.
Kyle Smith, reviewing it for the Journal, says the battle for Tarawa Atoll is the film's high point. He compares it to the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. He also says the film can't decide what it is. It's proud and it's sorrowful. It wants to honor the men and recoil from the war in the same breath. The football-and-war link feels thin to him. Drill sergeants tell the players war isn't a game. Later a player draws up an attack like a football play. Smith's verdict fits in four words, “more buzz than bite.”
Where to watch it
The film is a Netflix production. It's playing in theaters first and starts streaming Nov. 25. Smith's one practical note is about the sound. A good theater is likely to make the combat scenes hit far harder than a living room can. If you go, know that the war scenes are graphic. The game itself switches from touch to tackle midway, and Smith can't find the point the film means by that.
Our read
This is a Behavioral story, and a history one. There's no stock here and no verdict on a company. What stays with you is who these men were. They were college athletes with plans, and they set those plans down to go to war. Not all of them came back. With Veterans Day coming, that's worth a quiet evening, even if the movie is a muddle.
The connection to your own plan sits in Insurance. A film like this quietly asks who's covered if someone doesn't come home. Most of us will never face what these men did. The question still applies to anyone whose family lives on their paycheck. If that's you, pull up the life insurance through your job this week. Read the face amount, and check whether it ends the day you leave that employer. Group coverage usually does, though some plans let you convert it. Then look at who's named on it. You don't pack the parachute after you jump. A short insurance review is a fair use of the evening after the movie.