“THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER” My rating: B+ (Apple +)
126 minutes | MPAA rating: R
I put off watching Apple +’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” because…well, because it sounded kind of cheesy.
Notwithstanding that it is based on actual events, this yarn — about a good ol’ boy New Yorker who in 1968 smuggled himself into Vietnam to deliver American-made brews to the neighborhood guys fighting Charlie — sounded just a little too flip and insubstantial for my tastes.
I couldn’t have been more off the mark.
Directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly (who has evolved from the grossout yuks of “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber” to substantial fare like “Green Book”) this film walks a fine line between shaggy dog comedy and an essentially serious look at a subject the movies often get wrong.
Not having served I cannot testify to the accuracy of the movie’s war scenes. But I have never seen a film that so accurately captured the conflicts the war generated in our civilian population. The attitudes of the characters are absolutely right on.
That “…Beer Run” also gives us Zac Efron’s best performance yet is just icing on the cake.
Chickie Donohue (Efron) is a U.S. Merchant Marine who spends his time between voyages sleeping late and getting drunk at his neighborhood bar. He’s essentially directionless and irresponsible; politically he’s of the “my country, right or wrong” persuasion, which puts him perennially at odds with his younger sister, a regular at anti-war rallies.
Realizing he’s doing nothing for the cause, Chickie comes up with the idea of loading a duffel bag with beer and signing up as an oilman on a Vietnam-bound cargo ship. Once there he’ll make an extensive side trip to visit his childhood buddies who are stationed around the country. To each he will present a beer or two, a little gift of appreciation from the folks back home.
It’s a genuinely dumb-ass idea, but Efron masterfully sells Chickie’s enthusiasm and naivete. His pals in uniform are amazed to see him in ‘Nam — pleased with the beer but incredulous that anyone who doesn’t have to be there would come voluntarily.
The screenplay (co-written by Brian Hayes Currie and Pete Jones) balances farcical elements with more somber revelations.
For example, Chuckie finds he can get military transport anywhere he wants by implying that he’s working for the CIA. And he has the head-slapping habit of stumbling across his old running buddies in the midst of war’s chaos.
At the same time, we see his his growing realization that most everything he believes about the war is wrong. The film finds our man being shot at while delivering suds at a far-flung fire base. At one point he sees a suspected Viet Cong tossed out of an airborne ‘copter during an interrogation. And he’s on hand to witness the notorious Tet Offensive, when the Cong struck at the heart of Saigon during the Asian New Year celebration.
Now I have no idea how much of this the real Chickie experienced and how much was invented for the film. Indeed, many may conclude that the filmmakers have a fairly heavy hand in dealing anti-war sentiments in the movie’s latter stages.
But it works. “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is fueled equally by its far-fetched silliness and its growing sense of sadness — if not outrage — over the war’s toll.
Toss in a couple of fine supporting performances — Bill Murray as the New York bar owner whose jingoism sets the plot in motion, and Russell Crowe as a war correspondent through whose lens Chickie gets an education in real-world violence — and you’ve got a film that will stand up under repeated viewings.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 