The Greatest Beer Run Ever

In its two-hour runtime, the drama makes you chuckle and cry in equal measure, and all credits go to the writers for the characterisation of the protagonist ...

When he retorts with a justification that it has to be American beer, the camera pans to a can of American beer in the bar. In another scene, he clicks a picture of Chickie sleeping on a staircase after a night of horror. There's a magnificent stretch in the third act that also shines a glow on the importance of ethical, truthful reportage. The scene in which Chickie hangs out with a few war correspondents at a local bar in Vietnam, has someone ask why he should deliver beer to his friends when they can get it in Vietnam. For instance, after he chooses to go to Vietnam, Chickie seems a bit hesitant about his decision, but news spreads like wildfire in the neighbourhood, and he is met by personal requests from families of soldiers stationed in some of the most remote and turbulent war zones there. Imagine that you are a soldier in a distant foreign land, fighting death day in and out, and then — all of a sudden — you find your sweet neighbour from home, who has travelled thousands of miles, step onto the battlefield and give you a can of beer.

Apple TV ships Zac Efron and Russell Crowe out to Vietnam to retell an unlikely true story.

But The Greatest Beer Run Ever is neither funny nor dramatic, and ultimately feels as futile as travelling thousands of miles to give a beer to someone who could have easily got one anyway. The movie finally has the guts to say, yeah, war really is a bad thing, but nobody got the memo explaining that showing is generally better than telling. Despite being on the other side of the world, he has a habit of bumping into people he knows with such implausible regularity that it feels like Vietnam is the sixth borough of NYC. Early on, Chickie and his friends (including a flat-topped Bill Murray as a WW2 vet bar owner) are quick to shut down any criticism of President Lyndon B Johnson, the war, or the possible motives behind it, whether it’s from TV news or student protestors. Zac Efron brings a degree of charm to the role, but Chickie never feels like a real person as he pinballs around US army bases like a painfully unaware, moustachioed Forrest Gump. You’d have thought that a few more decades of contemplation would provide a whole new perspective on a war that ended nearly five decades ago – like the one Spike Lee brought to 2020’s emotional, visceral and highly political Da 5 Bloods (available on Netflix).

The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a film based on the true story of Chickie Donohue who went to Vietnam during the Vietnam war to track down his friends and ...

They get to the base and Chickie meets Bobby in the infirmary. The next morning Rick tells him that he needs to go back home and Chickie gets on a copper with another CIA agent and a prisoner. He apologizes and tells her that his experiences have given him a new outlook on things. When he gets back home, his friends treat him like a hero but Chickie is traumatised by what he witnessed in Vietnam. Coates tells him that he doesn’t know where it is and they won’t let him in any way. He talks to them about all that he witnessed and one of them, Arthur Coates, covers his tab and sits down with him to chat. He spends the night with Tom and his company and when their superior walks in, Chickie says that he’s just there on his own delivering beers to his friends. They land at the Kontum airbase and the other agent asks Chickie who he is and gets suspicious when Chickie claims he’s just another “tourist” like him. The bartender tells Chickie that only military personnel are allowed to travel around so he gets another idea. Tom tells Chickie that his idea is crazy but he wants to go anyway. Chickie doesn’t agree with that notion and is of a more patriotic mindset, believing that their men are fighting for the right reasons over there. Chickie works in the Merchant Navy as an oiler and is on his vacation.

Is The Greatest Beer Run Ever based on a true story or is Zac Efron's new Vietnam War movie on Apple TV a piece of Hollywood fiction?

[People Magazine](https://people.com/movies/how-zac-efron-bonded-with-81-year-old-hero-who-inspired-his-wild-new-movie/) how “There’s an incredible amount of innocence and bravery and honor in what he accomplished. Speaking to the BBC, Efron acknowledged how “I couldn’t believe it was a true story, it just sounded like a very silly idea and young and stupid. Chickie would then negotiate, barter and sometimes deceive officers in order to make his way across the war-torn country in search of his fellow Inwood natives. Chickie would then get a job on the merchant ship ‘Drake Victory’, which was to deliver ammunition to the depleted American forces in Vietnam. Zac Efron stars in Apple TV’s latest feature film, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, but is it really based on a true story? However, from Full Metal Jacket and The Last Full Measure, to Platoon and Da 5 Bloods, the conflict has led to some truly captivating pieces of cinema.

Like other semi-casual Vietnam war movies that have come before it, the action comedy journey of Oscar winner Peter Farrelly's The Greatest Beer Run Ever ...

For example, rather than respectfully including or positively representing the fuller Vietnamese characters in the movie that were vital in the book, The Greatest Beer Run Ever kills off two of the three local characters you spend any time with in falsified fashions of ambivalence or cruelty. Gravity and seriousness were needed, and these were not the men to provide that properly. Farrelly’s movie softly pushes those repetitive messages that have been done better elsewhere, making The Greatest Beer Run Ever 30 years late in its relevance and topicality. The novel is chock full of engaging and poignant encounters–noble gestures and all–in spades. Folks, the preposterousness of The Greatest Beer Run Ever is quite real, and every side character encountered by Efron’s Chickie audibly reminds us it’s “that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard” every chance the script allows them. The missing ingredient to that properness, as crazy as it sounds in a story this zany, is the truth. Zac Efron is affable enough as an actor to pull off this borderline blockhead juiced by a sense of duty and honor. You’re the bringer of beautiful refreshment and, in Chickie’s case, a human postcard that hands a warrior a “good old American beer to let them know what they are fighting for.” The flighty goal was a show of support from a tight-knit urban community where families are close and the grief, funerals, and protests have increased to weary levels. Representing Doc Fiddler’s Pub and the entitled demographic of pro-war supporters of President Lyndon Johnson, Chickie Donahue would fill a duffel bag of Pabst Blue Ribbon pull-tab cans and use his Merchant Marine status to get an engine room job on a supply ship departing New York for Saigon. Inevitably, the happy-go-lucky circumstances have dissolved away to the honest truths and horrors of war. Like other semi-casual Vietnam war movies that have come before it, the action comedy journey of Oscar winner Peter Farrelly’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever streaming on Apple TV+ reaches a momentum where it has to switch gears.

Where and how can you watch Zac Efron's new Vietnam War movie The Greatest Beer Run Ever around the world online?

“It’s one of those unbelievable real-life scenarios that you just can’t believe a guy got himself into. - Shirleyann Kaladjian as Mrs. - Kristin Carey as Mrs. What starts as a well-meaning journey quickly changes Chickie’s life and perspective. “What interested me was it was a guy going into a war zone, during an act of war, to bring beer to his friends. Based on a true story.” – The Greatest Beer Run Ever synopsis, via Apple TV

Zac Efron leads an ensemble cast as John “Chickie” Donohue, a guy going nowhere in life during the Vietnam War who decides he's going to finally do something ...

It takes a special kind of cold cynicism to say that America has ever “saved the world,” even in a movie about how a guy learns that the Vietnam War and the C.I.A. Most of the tunes don’t line up perfectly with the date of the movie, but it’s not every day you hear [Vashti Bunyan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vashti_Bunyan) on the soundtrack to a war film, so I accept the slip. (The movie waffles every scene about whether he’s doing the right thing or he’s just a well-meaning fool who needs to grow up.) It’d be tempting to say that Greatest Beer Run is a step back in the right direction for Farrelly, but it’s just more of the same. Sometimes, war’s a place you can learn and grow, and sometimes you save the world. a feature length adaptation of the operator drop a Vietcong prisoner out of a helicopter in a scene set to a jaunty pop tune.) (I only watched Green Book because they put it on in the waiting room for jury duty selection back in 2019, which made the most annoying day of my year even worse.) The only thing that sobers him up long enough to feel something is the constant news of the deaths of neighborhood guys in the Vietnam War. And his sister (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis) desperately tries to talk him out of the trip. [Peter Farrelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Farrelly)‘s shift from world’s most grotesque American comedy director to world’s most grotesque historical fiction director. Zac Efron leads an ensemble cast as John “Chickie” Donohue, a guy going nowhere in life during the Vietnam War who decides he’s going to finally do something with himself.

Setting that clumsy political observation aside for a moment, as it is the first of many, it is here that we get to see how this provides a purpose for Chickie ...

That is where we get back to the political component that is interwoven through the narrative. There clearly is a fondness for the character at the center of this story, though the film never seems interested in fully grappling with how he grows and changes. [Da 5 Bloods](https://collider.com/da-5-bloods-netflix-review/), it lacks the sense of gravity or the gregariousness to pull it off. There is some hint of self-awareness to the story as he clearly doesn’t understand the full depths of the war that is taking place. Though Chickie is warned that war isn’t like what he sees in the movies, the film itself mostly plays like a recreation of tropes with a few jokes here and there. Even when there are gasps of clarity, The Greatest Beer Run gets swallowed up by its own shallowness. That isn’t to say that films can’t find humor in the horrors of war and the dark absurdity of being sent to die for basically nothing. Through it all, it is so sincere and genuine that it begins to border on being sappy. Seeing Chickie wander around with his duffel bag of beer and gifts from home is a prevailing visual gag that it can’t fully coast off of. It is never silly enough to be as fun as it thinks it is nor is it humble enough to actually capture any emotional connection. Thus, despite not having much of a plan, he decides to hitch a ride over to the war to prove everyone wrong. We quickly learn that almost everyone who knows him considers him to be a bum who hasn’t made much of his life.

Movie Review: In 'The Greatest Beer Run Ever,' now on Apple TV+, Zac Efron plays John “Chickie” Donohue, a New York man who, in 1967 and 1968, ...

“Hey, you’re in luck!” Once in Saigon, Chickie realizes that “tourist” is an informal code among the military for “CIA,” so he rides that con for a while. [abysmal Firestarter](https://www.vulture.com/article/movie-review-stephen-kings-firestarter-with-zac-efron.html), which the actor essentially walked through, The Greatest Beer Run Ever is welcome proof that he can run with the right material. He will be transformed by what he sees in Vietnam, and the naïveté of the early scenes will be demolished as our hero inadvertently eases his way into hell. Because the film presents Chickie as having taken on this absurd challenge partly to show everybody that he isn’t useless and that he can, in fact, follow through on a promise. The filmmakers seem so impressed with the fact that all this really happened that they haven’t done the work necessary onscreen to convince us that something like this could really happen. It’s hard to tell if The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a comedy that wants to be a drama or a drama that wants to be a comedy.

Peter Farrelly returns with The Greatest Beer Run Ever, in which Zac Efron's Chickie delivers beers to his pals fighting in the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, The Greatest Beer Run Ever leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. There’s a great story and a good movie somewhere in The Greatest Beer Run Ever, but Farrelly just hasn’t found it. The film plays Chickie as an underachiever, but he was a Navy Marine who had active duty under his belt and while it’s mentioned in the beginning, it’s quickly brushed under a rug in order to create a more dramatic narrative about a loser going to Vietnam with a bag full of beer. Chickie is a fascinating character – a man out of his depth in the middle of the war, just so he can have a beer with his mates – and Efron plays him relatively straight, but with something constantly bubbling under the surface. While The Greatest Beer Run Ever is far less ambitious and entertaining, it also seems to somewhat erase the Vietnamese trauma from its film. He’s been the beefcake in films like Baywatch and Bad Neighbours and the romantic lead in The Greatest Showman, but his brand feels elusive and there’s been a distinct feel that he’s capable of more than what he’s been offered.

The comedy-drama film "The Greatest Beer Run Ever" is based on an impossibly true incident from recent American history, and yet is an uninspiring letdown.

In the end, Chick Donahue visits a park used by the anti-war protestors as a meeting ground and lights a candle in honor of the fallen soldiers. However, ever since talking to his friends serving in the war, he had realized that the people back home calling for the war to be stopped and the soldiers to be returned perhaps made more sense. By now, he realizes that none of his foolishly heroic actions, or perhaps nothing other than the end of the war, would be enough to compensate for the stress and dangers the soldiers had to face each day. However, in a rather dramatic manner, his only company on the plane back home are dozens of coffins wrapped with the American flag, containing the bodies of soldiers who were killed in the war. The result is that neither has any lasting effect and no matter how good the individual performances are, the film as a whole look just shallow and forgettable. Here he met with a group of American and international journalists who were reporting on the war, and Chick immediately shared his opinion on their work. The two men run through the streets and bear witness to what essentially was the Fall of Saigon, and Arthur even helps Chick out of trouble. The man had set out on this journey to cheer up his friends and give them a good time, wholeheartedly believing that a can of local American beer and the company of an old friend would be enough to cheer them up. When the superior refuses to let him leave the ship, Chick cooks up a story about having to meet his stepbrother to tell him of their father’s death and manages to get permission finally. Therefore, whenever someone calling themselves, a civilian tourist went up to Vietnam, the army officials clearly understood them to be secretive CIA agents and did not meddle in their actions. It is in this last regard that “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” falters the most, as it fails to make itself convincing or move viewers beyond any superficial degree. The comedy-drama film “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is based on an impossibly true incident from recent American history, and yet is an uninspiring letdown.

The Pitch: Peter Farrelly is back with his first film since Green Book, a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learned a lot ...

There’s a moment in this film where Chickie is about to catch a plane headed to the front with his bag of beers (we’ll get to those in a second). His new one, The Greatest Beer Run Ever, is a little different: it’s a biopic about an average white guy from New York in the 1960s who learns a lot about the world by stepping outside of his comfort zone in the Vietnam War, whilst simultaneously charming the more worldly people around him. The Myopic Lens of Your Own Self-Actualization: The Greatest Beer Run Ever is a film about why the Vietnam War was bad.

The actor plays a New Yorker who delivered a bag of beers to his friends serving in the Vietnam War. By Clark Collis September 30, 2022 at 04:00 PM EDT.

The film is now available to watch in cinemas and on Apple TV+. In real-life, he just couldn't be more lovely and sweet and he enjoyed being a part of the filming process. [Zac Efron](https://ew.com/person/zac-efron/) plays John "Chickie" Donohue, a New York-dwelling merchant seaman who decides to deliver cans of beer to people he knows serving in the Vietnam War.