‘The Mosquito Bowl’ Review: Peter Berg’s Powerful True WWII Story Takes Four Star Players From The Glory Of The Football Field To The Hell Of The Battlefield – AFI Fest

There have been so many films about WWII, both during and after, so many different takes and personal stories told, that now 81 years since it ended it is hard to imagine finding a fresh way to say anything new, but with his film adaptation of Buzz Bissinger’s best seller, “The Mosquito Bowl: A Game Of Life And Death In World War II”, filmmaker Peter Berg has done just that with a powerful and ultimately poignant portrait focusing on four very young star college football players who enlist after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and go on to fight the brusing Battle Of Okinawa. In less than three months they go from a football field to a very different battlefield where the score is sadly measured in lives lost, not points won.

The team of Berg and Bissinger seems appropriate here since both gave us that classic of Texas football, Friday Night Lights, and now find a new uniquely moving connection to the sport and the young men who played it. In the Netflix film, The Mosquito Bowl, which had its World Premiere Thursday night at AFI Fest in Hollywood, this true story of the transition of young star players who signed up to serve their country in its darkest hour becomes one of the most effective anti-war films I have ever seen, one that never resorts to preaching or false patriotic rah-rah posturing.

It achieves its true strength by putting us directly into the center of the hell of war, a visceral experience so intense and unrelenting it seems we are there and, like those who were on the front lines, a feeling there is no way out. Make no mistake, despite the premise, this is not a football movie, it is a war movie putting us right in harms way into the thick of battle, a film about the unforgiving nature of combat, and in that way makes you think twice about the price of it all and, 86 years later, about the cost now of wars being waged that never should have been started. Ultimately this is a human story, but fair warning, Berg whose films have included Lone Survivor, Deep Water Horizon, and other tales of valor and courage against all odds, does not hold back in showing the true horrors of the fight, in this case a noble one.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, four of America’s greatest college football stars — John McLaughry (Nicholas Galitzine), Bob Bauman (Bill Skarsgård), Tony Butkovich (Ray Nicholson) and David Schreiner (Tom Francis), in their late teens or early twenties put country over fame and enlist in the Marines. They were like others who experience glory in sports who had to face a nightmare, a violent unforgiving battlefield for which they had little time to prepare. Berg’s screenplay, written with Mark L. Smith introduces us to four men, putting the focus on them to tell a larger story. We move from 1941 college ball to training at Parris Island in South Carolina, right into the front lines in the Pacific Theater. The story is essentially told through the eyes of Galitzine’s McLaughry, an impressive young man with deep talents that will take him far in life if he can survive a war with no timetable for its end. Each of the others we follow along the way are distinctive persnalities, with Nicholson’s vibrant Tony Butkovich a massive star player you feel could withstand hits from any direction; Skarsgard’s Bob Bauman a little more loose with a devil-may-care attitude; and Francis’ Scheiner a more shy and humble type of All American.

In the telling of this particular tale in WWII these four represent many others, but it is smart of Berg and Bissinger to zero in on just a few, because in addition to all the shooting and explosions and sounds and sights of carnage all around them, we have time to see their humanity, their fortitude, and heroism, their bonding, all of which makes the inevitable loss of young lives all that much more emotional. The bulk of this film is war, but as it was for 64 college players who gathered one afternoon , there is a brief respite from it all in the Mosquito Bowl, an organized game that would take them back to earlier times. For a moment they were all boys again, superstar players, tossing the ball, hitting the end zone. It wasn’t just relief for them, it is also for the audience now watching it unfold because it shows how time was fleeting.

What is to come afterwards is when their world is on fire as the fierce Battle Of Okinawa Island takes them , and us, back to sad reality. In actual numbers 14 of the young men playing that game that day would die on Okinawa, three of them were among the four Marines we get to know so well.

In terms of filmmaking this is one of Berg’s most impressive outings. He shot in sequence, not the usual course in production, and it clearly helped the actors build their brotherhood and camraderie in authentic fashion. The use of tight camera lens and handheld against a 360 degree background that takes in the whole environment the characters are experiencing is very effectively employed. Thanks to the exceptional cinematography of Jacques Jouffret we are right in their faces. Shout out also to editors Jon Otazua and Garret Donnelly, as well as the music score from Explosions In The Sky, a regular contributor to Berg’s films. The four main stars, Galitzine, Skarsgard, Nicholson, and Francis are completely believable as football stars suddenly thrust into the life of a Marine with little time to train before being shipped out knowing it might be a one way ticket. It is a fine ensemble in a movie well worth seeing not as just another war movie but rather one that should make any leader think hard about the human price paid everytime they start one.

Producers are Berg, Brian Grazer, and Alex Gayner.

Title: The Mosquito Bowl

Festival: AFI Fest – World Premiere

Distributor: Netflix

Release Date: October 30, 2026 (Theatrical); November 25, 2026 (streaming)

Director: Peter Berg

Screenplay: Peter Berg and Mark L. Smith

Cast: Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, Tom Francis, Brent Comer, Jack Ingram, Ella Newton, Peter Berg, Dominic Bogart, Lola Bond, Stacy Clausen, Billy Smith, Steven Sammut, Blake Erickson, Claudia Ware, Pat McAfee

Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hours and 6 minutes