Film Review – The Mosquito Bowl

In 2004, co-writer/director Peter Berg set out to understand the power of community and competition with “Friday Night Lights,” looking to move beyond the world of high school football to capture the energy of small town America. It was an adaptation of a book by journalist H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger, and now Berg tries to find his way around “The Mosquito Bowl.” It’s another Bissinger endeavor (published in 2022), also about the strange influence of football over the lives of young men in conflict. This time the battleground is World War II, putting Berg (and co-writer Mark L. Smith, “The Dog Stars”) to work generating emotional and physical intensity as a global conflict comes for individual lives just beginning to form. “The Mosquito Bowl” attempts to overwhelm with violence, but Berg doesn’t trust his audience, repeatedly taking the whole film into overkill when he isn’t drowning the movie in speeches and irksome cinematography. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com