Given movies like “Friday Night Lights” and “Lone Survivor,” and series like “American Primeval,” there’s a pretty direct line through football, war, masculinity, and violence in the work of filmmaker Peter Berg. His latest, “The Mosquito Bowl,” brings all those interests together. Another Netflix collaboration, following “American Primeval” and “Painkiller,” the film tells the true story of a famous World War II football game, based on Buzz Bissinger’s 2022 nonfiction book, “The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II.” Bissinger also wrote the original “Friday Night Lights” book that Berg adapted for the screen; how’s that for full-circle storytelling?
Netflix released a new red-band trailer for the film, following the earlier trailer this month. It stars Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis as four college football players who put country ahead of personal ambition, setting aside their promising athletic careers to enlist in the Marines following Pearl Harbor—patriotism being yet another of Berg’s recurring obsessions.
The story centers on a remarkable football game played on Guadalcanal in 1944, featuring some of America’s best college players, many of whom had traded promising sports careers for military service. With the invasion of Okinawa looming, the game offered a brief escape from the war. For some of the players, it would be their last.
Berg has made plenty of movies involving soldiers, combat, and the military, but he doesn’t consider this one a straightforward celebration of war. “ ‘The Mosquito Bowl’ honors the humanity of those who fought, mourns those who never came home, and reminds us of the true cost of war,” Berg said in a recent interview with Netflix’s Tudum.
Berg co-wrote the screenplay with Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant”), who wrote “American Primeval,” while Brian Grazer and Alex Gayner produce alongside the director. The supporting cast includes Brent Comer, Dominic Bogart, Jack Ingram, and Pat McAfee. And in another “Friday Night Lights” reunion, post-rock band Explosions in the Sky provides the film’s score.
And not for nothing, Berg isn’t finished exploring war and its psychological toll. He’s also directing Paramount’s upcoming “Call of Duty” movie, which, as he recently explained, will explore the similar price of being a soldier. “The Mosquito Bowl,” which had its world premiere at AFI FEST last week, opens in select theaters October 30 before arriving on Netflix November 25. Watch the red-band trailer below.
