‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’: Toronto Review

Dir: Peter Farrelly. US. 2022. 126mins.

Telling the story of an ordinary American who decided impulsively to go into Vietnam in 1967 to give his servicemen buddies a beer, director Peter Farrelly’s followup to Green Book aims for a comparable feel-good tone, once again drawing from the thorny past to offer cosy messages about how small-minded individuals can grow by experiencing plight of other people. Zac Efron does his best to exude everyman charm, but The Greatest Beer Run Ever feels manipulative and glib, reducing the complexity of the United States’ ill-advised involvement in the Vietnam War to a would-be heartwarming tale of a callow regular dude who wises up. 

Hopelessly banal

Green Book debuted in Toronto four years ago, taking the audience award and then later winning three Oscars, including Best Picture. This comedy/drama/war picture similarly aims to be a crowd-pleaser. Russell Crowe and Bill Murray have supporting roles in a film that’s based on a true story and arrives on Apple TV+ on September 30, alongside a US theatrical engagement. 

John “Chickie” Donohue (Efron) is a directionless New York merchant mariner who spends his days avoiding paying his bar tab and passively keeping up with the Vietnam War on television. Others are protesting the conflict — including his sister Christine (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) — which the hotheaded Chickie thinks is unpatriotic. But after he is challenged to demonstrate how he is actually supporting the troops, he hatches a surprising plan: he will hitch a ride on a boat bringing supplies to US forces, toting around a duffel bag full of beer cans to hand out to his friends who have joined the fight.

Occasionally, Beer Run satirises the silliness of Chickie’s mission — he has no strategy for getting around war-torn Vietnam and, more importantly, it’s actually not that hard to acquire American beer in the country — while Efron plays the character as a well-meaning fool who has his eyes opened about the Vietnam conflict. In certain moments, Beer Run promises to be an irreverent truth-is-crazier-than-fiction saga about this young man whose brash naivety should have gotten him killed yet, somehow, emerged unscathed. (As one battle-hardened soldier notes, some people are too stupid to die.)But because Chickie comes across as entitled rather than endearingly stubborn — constantly asking everyone he meets to violate their orders or put themselves in harm’s way because he wants to deliver some brews — his quest seems incredibly self-centred. The film doesn’t view it that way, though, indulging his immaturity by insisting that he’s trying to do some good.

Farrelly’s tendency toward simplistic bromides in Green Book is even more egregious here. Beer Run’s observations about the divisiveness of the Vietnam War and the horror of honourable soldiers being sacrificed at the whim of politicians are hopelessly banal. By focusing on a 55-year-old war, Beer Run doesn’t risk saying anything provocative, its commentary safely cordoned off from any contemporary concerns, such as America’s long presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result, Chickie’s path to enlightenment is both pre-ordained and wholly uncontroversial. (Likewise, his realisations about why the press should tell the truth, as opposed to putting a positive spin on things, feel especially patronising.) 

The film, which Farrelly co-wrote based on Donohue’s book, is structured as a road movie, with Chickie bluffing his way from army base to army base as he tries to track down his friends. Initially, his ability to traverse the country as a layman is handled amusingly — the perplexed higher-ups assume he must be CIA posing as a civilian — but soon that segues into a convoluted thriller plot which sends him on the run after witnessing some shady US operatives behaving monstrously. The more that Beer Run veers toward being an action picture or a war drama, the more superficial its “actually, the Vietnam War was bad” worldview seems.

Crowe is appropriately gruff as a stereotypically world-weary reporter whose growing respect for Chickie’s courage and conviction seems misplaced. Murray plays a man known simply as The Colonel, the guy who runs the bar back home and a crotchety war vet unhappy with how critical everyone is of the troops. (Naturally, Chickie will later educate The Colonel on why Vietnam is different to the Second World War.) During the Vietnam sequences, we mostly spend time with US soldiers, an indication of the film’s incuriosity about the Vietnamese whose country was invaded. Of the locals, only one, a traffic cop played by Kevin Tran, is given even the barest outline of a character. It’s no surprise that Beer Run’s only interest in him is how he can help Chickie become a better person.