VFW: A B-Movie Homage That Earns A C

Now that awards season is over, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to take a break from plowing through acclaimed films designed as Oscar bait and partake in some lower-brow fare. You know, just turn your brain off and let your sense of good taste go into a little late-winter hibernation. If that’s the kind of mood you’re in, director Joe Begos (Bliss, Almost Human) has a film for you. It’s called VFW, and it brings together a group of aged action stalwarts to face off against some drug-addicted zombies. It’s dumb fun, but unfortunately not nearly as much as the description would make it sound.

Home Front

Fred (notorious cinematic badass Stephen Lang) is the grizzled, grumpy bartender at a local VFW post, where he regularly serves up drinks — and downs more than a few himself — to a crew of fellow veterans who all seem to have a hard time moving on from their days in uniform. Fred, in particular, seems to not know what to do with himself without a war to fight or a drink to serve. While all of his friends went back overseas when they got home from their first tour in Vietnam because they couldn’t think of anything else to do, Fred went back multiple times, as though he couldn’t get enough. Now, he is reticent and unwilling to reminisce about the glory days in the same way his friends do.

While one gathers that Fred is only truly in his element when he is in the heat of battle, it’s still a huge shock when a battle lands right on the doorstep of his bar one night (coincidentally, also Fred’s birthday). A young woman named Lizard (Sierra McCormick) runs into the bar with a stash of drugs. And not just any drug: this is a new concoction called “hype,” which essentially turns addicts into the rage-addled mutants from 28 Days Later. Lizard stole the drugs from the local kingpin, Boz (Travis Hammer), in order to avenge her sister’s death from an overdose. Now, Boz and his army of mindless, furious addicts are descending upon the bar in order to get their drugs back…meaning Fred and his friends are back at war once again.

Near Dark

In addition to Lang, VFW’s all-star lineup of ass-kickers includes Martin Kove (Death Race 2000, The Karate Kid), William Sadler (Die Hard 2, but also the Grim Reaper in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey!), David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors, The Crow), and Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, From Dusk Till Dawn). Oh, and George Wendt of Cheers fame is also there, I guess because the action takes place in a bar? Tom Williamson rounds out the gang as a young soldier recently returned from active duty who stops by for a beer with some fellow vets and ends up in the middle of hell. Together, they are a formidable and funny crew who clearly hasn’t forgotten how to wage war despite most of them having lifted far more pint glasses than pistols in the past few decades.

Uniting what is essentially the low-budget version of The Expendables to fight a swarm of mutant drug addicts clad in costumes that appear to be leftover from The Road Warrior sounds like the perfect recipe for trashy fun, but I was largely disappointed by the film itself. The main reason was the film’s dreary cinematography, which is so dimly lit that one can barely see the action. If you’re going to make a film as deranged and delightfully violent as VFW, why would you make the gory bits so hard to see?

For most of the movie, I felt like I was watching a low-budget version of “The Long Night” episode of Game of Thrones, squinting into the gloom to try and catch a splash of blood or splatter of brains. You shouldn’t need to work so hard to watch such a mindless movie; you should be able to be as inebriated as the characters in it are and still understand what is going on.

Another unfortunate annoyance was the character of Lizard, whose every line of dialogue was delivered as a childish whine; if I were the men at the center of VFW, I would have done the dishonorable thing and thrown her back out of the bar. Fortunately, her presence in the film is counterbalanced by that of the cartoonishly hilarious drug lord Boz, who is blessed with lines of dialogue like “Soldiers? Good. Soldiers are good at dying” and delivers them all with a perfectly calibrated sneer. Boz feels as though he were pulled directly out of one of the best movies from the seedy era that VFW strives to emulate, though, in the end, the film doesn’t measure up to the trashy action-horror classics of yesteryear.

VFW: Conclusion

If you walk into a dive bar similar to the one featured in VFW, and this movie is on the screen, you’ll probably look up from your beer more than a few times, but not enough for the movie to be truly memorable.

What do you think? Are you a fan of violent B-movies? Does VFW sound appealing to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

VFW was released in the U.S. on February 14, 2020. You can find more international release dates here.