VFW: Gore, Neon, and Not Much Else

VFW
Directed by: Joe Begos
Written by: Max Brallier & Matthew McArdle
Starring: Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Fred Williamson
Original Release: 2019
Available on: Amazon Prime

I watched VFW on Amazon Prime late at night while my parents were in bed. The setup was promising enough: a group of old war veterans find themselves trapped in their local VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars] community centre cum pub, forced to defend themselves against a horde of drug-fuelled maniacs. The film wears its influences on its sleeve—Die Hard, Night of the Living Dead, Assault on Precinct 13—and while that kind of hommage can be enjoyable, VFW never rises above being an uninspired collage of better films.

To give credit where it’s due, the gore is solid. Director Joe Begos knows how to stage a satisfyingly brutal fight scene, and the film’s practical effects deliver the expected showers of blood and brain matter. Limbs are hacked off, heads are crushed, and bodies explode in a manner that should please connoisseurs of splatter. But, if the neon lighting and grindhouse aesthetic try their best to inject style, no amount of lighting tricks can distract from the film’s deeper problems.

The main issue is that none of the characters is particularly engaging. The cast is stacked with genre veterans—Stephen Lang, William Sadler, and Fred Williamson among them—but their roles are thinly sketched and their dialogue largely forgettable. Lang’s grizzled ex-soldier, ostensibly our lead, lacks the charisma to carry the film, and the supposed camaraderie between the old-timers never quite feels genuine. They bark and growl at each other, but there’s little chemistry to make us care whether they survive the night.

Not that survival is much of a mystery. Within ten minutes, I had already worked out exactly who would make it to the end credits and who would be sacrificed along the way. The script follows such an obvious formula that there is no tension—just a series of predictable deaths leading to an equally predictable climax. For a film like this to work, it either needs characters we care about or at least some surprises along the way. VFW offers neither.

Visually, the film is competent. The effects are first class, the set design convincingly grimy, and the action is staged well enough. But it all feels like an exercise in mimicry rather than anything original. If you want to see a siege movie done properly, John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 is right there. If you want to see old warriors battling younger monsters with actual emotional weight, Walter Hill’s Extreme Prejudice or The Wild Bunch will do the job better.

VFW isn’t offensively bad, just depressingly uninspired. If all you want is a dose of neon-drenched ultraviolence, you might find enough here to keep you entertained. But if you’re looking for genuine suspense or characters worth investing in, this is a battle not worth fighting.