‘Big, bold, brash’ new sci-fi film tops Netflix charts in just one day

Netflix’s latest original film has been praised by fans as one of the best films of 2026 and ‘highly entertaining’ on its way to top the streamer’s charts.

War Machine, starring Reacher actor Alan Ritchson, soared straight into the number one position in the UK just one day after its pretty quiet release on the platform.

It beat the likes of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt’s action caper The Fall Guy, popular animated movie The Boss Baby, grisly horror Abigail and true crime documentary Murder on the Doorstep.

War Machine, directed and co-written by The Hitman’s Bodyguard filmmaker Patrick Hughes, follows the final recruits of a gruelling special ops boot camp who encounter a deadly force from beyond this world.

The movie also stars Dennis Quaid, Stephan James, Jai Courtney and Mission: Impossible’s Esai Morales.

Ritchson plays Staff Sergeant 81, a highly capable Afghanistan veteran with PTSD who struggles to bond with his fellow candidates and refuses a team leader position on the course despite his experience.

During the final exercise, the team is startled by an unknown blast in the sky, which knocks out communications, before they find what looks to be a classified aircraft in the creek.

But after detonating it with explosives, it transforms into a walking machine and starts killing the team, with Ritchson’s character heard saying in the trailer: ‘Whatever that thing is it’s hunting us – and it won’t stop.’

War Machine has made a solid debut with fans and critics alike, managing a 70% rating so far from professional reviewers on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes and 75% from audiences.

‘Legitimately entertaining, it’s not an Oscar contender but a great popcorn movie. Basically Reacher fights space robot, but well shot and a good time,’ summarised Brett W.

Other fans were more effusive, with Melissa W writing, ‘I loved it. Had to pause it for a minute to get myself together’, while others singled it out as the best action movie of 2026 so far and several shared their hopes for a sequel.

‘Kept me on edge the whole movie, waiting for the 2nd,’ said Dominic M, and Edith N added: ‘Not the biggest fan of war movies but this kept me watching and wanting more action and hits of wit. I hope there is sequel because I felt hanging and hoping for more [sic.].’

But some audience members were less entertained, dissmissing it as ‘brainless eye candy and immediately forgettable’ and suggesting there was ‘a good movie in here trying to get out’.

Critics praised it as ‘gloriously fun’ while reviewer Nagier Chambers quipped: ‘It does not reinvent the wheel, but it straps alien artillery onto it and drives it hard enough to make for an entertaining, if familiar, ride.’

‘War Machine is big, loud, occasionally ridiculous, and fully aware of it. It’s a high-volume time killer that doesn’t apologise for its influences – it practically flexes them,’ observed AU Review’s piece as JoBlo’s Movie Network’s critic called it ‘a fun and action-packed throwback that’s one of the better action movies in recent memory’.

‘The pleasures of Netflix’s sci-fi action movie War Machine are simple, straightforward, and gut-level. There’s a strong thread of competence porn here, and it covers both what’s happening on screen, and what’s clearly going on behind it,’ argued Polygon’s review.

But others were less generous, as critic Eddie Harrison described it as ‘a Predator rip-off without a fresh idea in its thick head’.

Ritchson is known for the impressive fight and action sequences he pulls off in Prime Video’s global smash-hit series Reacher, where he fully inhabits the role of author Lee Child’s looming 6’5 drifter veteran Jack Reacher, previously played by Tom Cruise in two movie adaptations from the novels.

But the 43-year-old actor has said that War Machine represented his biggest challenge yet.

‘It was hard. I’m not going to lie, this was the most I’ve ever been pushed physically, and it was the most I’ve ever doubted my own ability to finish,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter.

He and director Hughes have teamed up for a second time already, on an untitled movie based on Vietnam veteran Navy SEAL Mike Thornton’s service, which earned him the Congressional Medal of Honour, the highest US military decoration – and it sounds like the ante has already been upped.

Ritchson revealed: ‘We’re working on another movie now, and it was the first time I ever had to ask for oxygen on set. The first day of filming, I was like, [gasping] “A medic! I’m going to die.”’

War Machine is streaming exclusively now on Netflix.

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