War on Everyone's main flaws hurt its ambition to leave a stronger impression: it's a bit messy with pacing issues and it's leads lack charisma. It's therefor a step down for McDonagh, who made the excellent The Guard and the also very good Calvary. War on Everyone still has good touches of black humor like those films, as well as fun and eccentric characters that make the film hit plenty of marks during it's run time.
Nice cinematography, a good flow of songs throughout and the script surely doesn't seem to be the problem, make it a good film. But the directing feels behind in this one, perhaps too influenced by a studio wanting mold it to other Hollywood fare. It should be able to stand on it's own, but feels a bit too much wanting to be like Pulp Fiction. And as mentioned before, Pena and Sarsgard, while not a problem, they're just fine, filling the void of the lead roles but not doing more with it either. The film has panache and is satisfying for the laughs it still delivers, but a bit disappointing considering McDonagh's previous work.

B

War on Everyone

McDonagh's come undone here. As suspected, he should've kept making Irish films. His foray into the American crime thriller is a mish-mash of scenes, badly pieced together, an incoherent early drug-related plot, and with two utterly miscast leads that often ponder Greek mythology et alia. The Lethal Weapon-style buddy cop movie, but with a slice of darker comedy, does not wash here. Skarsgård's boozy brute (Martin Riggs, if you will) should have been played by an Irishman, and Peña's intellectual non-white family man (Roger Murtaugh) should have been played someone that doesn't look like the first time they said the name Pythagoras was in this film. And Theo James, ugh. It's just bad casting after bad casting. And I could not help think throughout this film that Caleb Landry Jones would make a fantastic Joker.

Towards the end of the film it gets a little more enjoyable, but this is a blip on an otherwise impeccable filmography for John Michael McDonagh. I appreciate the Gerry Stanton (played by Paul Reiser in this one) link to McDonagh's previous work (there's an Inspector Stanton in Calvary, and Gerry the policeman features in both The Guard and The Second Death), but there's not an awful lot to admire in War on Everyone.

C+

I remember this is what made me end up feeling rather positive about it eventually, but there's no doubt the film is troubled.