I feel like folks will say this movie isn't woke, but it is. People see a white guy in the lead and will claim a victory against DEI. First of all it's a mid tier Predator knockoff. It's not a great movie outside any political bent. Secondly there's a tiny chick that makes it through to the finals of the Ranger selection program. Outside of seeing her running, they didn't show her during training. Now fair play, supposedly one woman has completed the program in history, but nothing is known of her, so take the Army's Time's word for it. Thirdly, the only other survivor than the protagonist is a black guy, who spends half the movie in a stretcher. Fourthly, Alan Ritchson is a liberal tool.
You get the modern mix of varying browns and other females shown during the end when the battalion is shown in full. There's also a weird detail in that I don't recall seeing any officers in the movie. I don't know if that's a message or anything but it's odd.
In short - This movie isn't as much on our side as you might think. Buyer beware.
They will probably go more woke for the sequel (and there is absolutely going to be a sequel given the way the first one ended).
I almost recommended this movie here but then I had all of these nagging criticisms about it that are identical to what Mpetey123 pointed out, and decided against it.
But he's absolutely right, this is literally modern day Predator fused with Lone Survivor... just cheaper.
If this film costs north of $40 mil to produce then they were obviously laundering majority of the money.
They filmed mostly in New Zealand and Canada, and the effects were relatively scaled back. The robot looked good, but the most costly effect it had was the scanners. Every time it fired its weapons they avoided showing projectiles to reduce the cost effect (i.e., not having to do superimposition or shadowing or lighting the plasma fire amongst the environment), and mostly just showed the impact of the shot, which was a generic explosive spark.
Some of the more costly effects were the dismemberment and gore, and definitely the ending sequence at the quarry. But if this costs $100 mil or more then it's pure clown-world financing.
Since the Ranger team also didn't have access to live-fire weapons throughout two-thirds of the film due to being on a training mission, the producers didn't have to worry about an armourer being on set or any sort of squibbing other than the cheap firework effects for the plasma cannons.
That being said, this movie comes very close to being worth recommending, because Alan Ritchson has to tough it out with his own wits and capabilities and training, identical to Arnold at the end of Predator, right down to building makeshift traps to overwhelm the mech. But all of the DEI issues really detract from this film in a very obvious and major way that cannot be ignored because of how forced into the film it is.
That being said, this is a Netflix movie, and we all know that the sequel is going to be chock full of the gays and girlbosses.