The Mosquito Bowl is Netflixs new football war drama — is it actually worth a Saturday night, or just another war movie with pads?
The Mosquito Bowl is trending hard this weekend — 10,000-plus searches and counting — and it is Peter Bergs Netflix football war drama, built around the real story of Marines staging a football game on Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve 1944. Berg has done this territory before with Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor, so the pedigree is there, but the premise is also exactly the kind of thing that can tip into sentimentality fast. I have got two hours on a Saturday night and a stack of unwatched stuff already. Is this one of those rare war dramas where the football game actually earns its place in the story, or is it a standard-issue war movie that happens to have shoulder pads in it? And for anyone who has watched it: does it hold up if you do not already care about the history?
1 answer
- Watch it for the game itself
I went in for the history and stayed for the game, honestly. The whole thing is built around Marines putting on a real football game on Guadalcanal on Christmas Eve 1944, in the middle of a war, and that is a story I had never heard before I saw the trailer. If a war drama can make you care about a single game when everyone on the field knows what comes next, it has earned its two hours. My test is simple: if the first twenty minutes do not make you want to know who those players were, turn it off. Mine did.