War Machine’s director shares his recipe for ‘the best action sequences’

That includes a particularly rattling early scene where the protagonists are blown off of a cliff. Reacher’s Alan Ritchson stars as “81,” an Army Ranger applicant whose squad of Ranger Assessment and Selection Program finalists are in the middle of their final search-and-destroy combat simulation when an extraterrestrial invader starts picking them off. There are bigger set pieces and explosions later in War Machine, but the moment where the whole squad takes a missile hit at close range, followed by a battering tumble down a steep hill, is one of the movie’s most memorable moments.