“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” (2022)
“War is not a TV show”
“War is not a TV show”
Under the direction of two time Academy Award winning director Peter Farrelly (Green Book, Dumb and Dumber, Fever Pitch, The Three Stooges) I expected this true life tale based upon the book of the same name written by John “Chickie” Donohue (Zac Efron), to be far funnier and more engaging than it actually is and whilst the real life story itself is a flight of ridiculous fancy, I just wasn’t convinced I was watching that represented on film. As the title of both the book and film suggest, this is a beer run but not along a suburban street or beside a river in a picturesque town, but through the war ravaged jungles of Vietnam in 1967 and at arguably the apex of the entire bloody misadventure that cost in excess of 55,000 USA servicemen and women their lives as well as estimates running into the hundreds of thousands of poor Vietnamese souls. The war itself is sadly nowhere near an end in 1967 and missing his friends, a highly valued childhood friend and many other “boys from the neighbourhood” conscripted to Vietnam, Chickie has the audacious idea to work his way aboard a commercial vessel bound for Vietnam armed with a bagful of American beer and the clothes on his back. After his arrival, Chickie has just 72 hours to deliver the beer run to his friends amongst the debris of very active warzones dotted around the country and despite being incredibly well meaning, his plan is clearly idealistically naïve as well as beautifully innocent and yet incredibly dangerous.
Amid the huge cast of friends and family both stateside and in the inhospitable jungles of war in Vietnam are two cameo roles for Bill Murray as a grizzled veteran of war known simply as “The Colonel” and owner of the local bar in a seemingly majority Irish/American enclave of Inwood, New York City, and Russell Crowe as a Vietnam based war reporter and photographer “Arthur Coates”. Both of these cameo roles assist Zac Efron’s central role together with the performance of Ruby Ashbourne Serkis as Chickie’s pacifist and peace seeking sister “Christine Donohue”.
Chickie maybe mistaken for a “tourist” and in every sense he is. He may also be “too dumb to get killed” but he’s desperate to see his friends again, to deliver that morale boosting beer run and with “everyone doing something”, he can finally lay claim to doing something, as well as innocently stumbling and bumbling his way through a world a literal world away from his own.
Despite the incredible true life story and a story I believed on the surface prior to watching to be one I’d love, I simply didn’t. I didn’t particularly care for the exposition heavy story represented and Chickie’s ability to stumble and bumble his way to his friends and avoiding the bullets of the Vietnamese enemy with ease, and perhaps large swathes of the book have been condensed to ensure a smoother transition between the hours and days spent inside the Vietnamese jungle? Despite my cinematic liking of Zac Efron and Russell Crowe as well as my adoration of the legend that is Bill Murray, I wasn’t particularly enamoured with the acting on show (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis’ excellent performance being the exception) and I also felt the obvious central themes of the human cost as well as the futility, reporting and the ugly politics of this horrific war combined with the already Corporatised sections of Vietnam with their overflowing availability of American products (including beer) could have been used to reinforce a larger and more fulfilling narrative.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“tick, tick…BOOM!” (2021)
Astounding central performance and lots of ticking but definitely no boom.medium.com
“A Small Fortune” (2021)
A film of two unconvincing and unexciting halvesmedium.com
“Resurrection” (2022)
Disappointing and disturbing psychological horror.medium.com