F orgive me, but it is difficult not to be a little cynical about The Mosquito Bowl, Peter Berg’s grimly serious action feature situated (and marketed during many an NFL game) at the intersection of two predominant male interests: football and the second world war. Though both are certainly rich topics for cinema, and though I have been a fan of many a football/war story – most especially Berg’s NBC series Friday Night Lights – it is, let’s say, a tricky time for movies filled with dubiously nostalgic patriotism and masculinity. The trailer practically drips with a borderline parodic virility: a cadre of handsome up-and-coming male actors streaked with dirt; a group of men “trained for glory” and “called to war”, triumphantly hoisting aloft footballs, beer and guns to ponderous music.

But Berg is a capable and battle-tested director who knows his way around both a clock-ticking thriller ( Deepwater Horizon , Lone Survivor ) and the football field.…