VFW ★★☆☆☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis

A group of war veterans must defend their local VFW post and an innocent teen against a deranged drug dealer and his relentless army of punk mutants.

Directed by Joe Begos.

Starring Stephen Lang, William Sadler and Fred Williamson.

Available to rent and buy now, coming to Netflix this week.

Review

VFW had been an off the cuff pick for ones to watch, at the last minute it appeared in some listings and I was intrigued by the cast and the vibe I was getting from the poster.

When a young girl's plan for revenge goes awry she leads a drug fueled army to the doorstep of the local veterans club. The group must defend their home away from home and try to survive until the morning.

The opening scene paints a picture of a slightly dystopian present/future where drugs run rife and cities are shells of their former selves. There are addicts and revellers all in different states and they're either in lively party spirits or high and out of it. Right from the off I found the set up confusing because you're watching something that is difficult to assess, the darkness makes it almost impossible to gauge the surrounding and you're thrown for a loop when they cut to the bright afternoon scene that is pinpointed by captions to just three hours later.

VFW definitely has a heavy 80s vibe to it. The titles, the background hum of music and the style of the filming. The colours are great but it is incredibly difficult to see anything unless you're watching it in anything but darkness. On my first watch I found myself squinting and peering at the screen trying to decipher what was going on.

There's no logical consistency to things that happen even if you take into consideration that half the characters are supposed to be drugged up to the eyeballs. The event that starts off the whole caper gives you a fairly clear idea of how the addicts react to things, if that is translated to the rest of the hoard then there's no way this film is making it past 30 minutes. It would have been done and dusted.

Dialogue throughout isn't very inspiring, there's are some truly dubious moments and the rest is easily forgotten. The scenes themselves aren't believable, the main cast get lots of opportunities to have moments together inside the VFW club despite having moments before been under the threat of a siege. There was one point where I genuinely wondered if the baddies approached and went "No. It's rude to interrupt someone when they're talking."

What it's missing in those areas it makes up for in random violence. (Make sure to watch out for the plastic machete.) There's a vaguely amusing tooling up sequence and I kind of hope they got the cast drunk and let them improvise weapons all on their own for it. This is another thing that smacks of the 80s, a lot of that violence feels like it's been lifted out of retro horror movies and adapted to this film.

I haven't spoken about the cast, and it's something that left me a little frustrated. The names and faces on the list are epic, they're solid actors with a lot of good credits under their belts... but even though they get a couple of good points in the film it's not really what I'd want for them.

VFW has a lot of elements that could work but with the slightly b-moviesque action scenes and clear omissions for the sake of having a "moment" I think it misses the opportunity to be something more serious. It's not right for b-movie/spoof status and because it doesn't take itself seriously enough it's left in a no man's land and I just couldn't figure out what it was trying to do, especially as even they didn't seem to know if they were attempting to make zombie or an action film.

What you should do

Being that it's coming to Netflix then it might be worth a shot, it's a very stylised film and successfully captures that 80s vibe, but I don't feel like if you skipped it you'd be missing out on anything.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

I'd love to run a bar/club like that, just with some better lighting and better neighbours.