Warfare Review
Warfare is an unflinchingly brutal look at combat.
Michael Gandolfini, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Adain Bradley in Warfare. Credit: Murray Close, Courtesy of A24
Warfare is Alex Garland’s latest film, co-written and co-directed by Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who served as a consultant and gunfight choreographer in Garland’s previous film, Civil War. The filmmakers set out to make a nearly real-time recounting of an operation in which Mendoza served in Iraq in 2006.
Mendoza, played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs), was a member of one of three groups of SEALs charged with surveiling an urban residential area in Al Qaeda-controlled territory to ensure the safety of ground troops that would be passing through the next day. Unknown to the team, the building they occupied was next door to a house controlled by insurgents. Al Qaeda forces injured two members of Mendoza’s team with a grenade. When they tried to evacuate, an IED explosion severely injured two SEALs, and the team became desperate to survive as they were further pinned down while awaiting rescue.
Taylor John Smith, Charles Melton, Alex Brockdorff in Warfare. Credit: Murray Close, Courtesy of A24
Garland and Mendoza wrote the script based purely on the survivors’ memories, including only what they could verify as true through corroboration of multiple people’s accounts. Mendoza strived to create something that would recount the events, in honor of Elliott Miller, played by Cosmo Jarvis (Shōgun), who was most severely injured that day and has no memory of it. In realizing that vision, the film’s cornerstone is its excellent cast, an ensemble of up-and-coming young actors, that also includes Charles Melton (May December), Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark), Will Poulter (Midsommar, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3), and Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One, Stranger Things).
Moments of relative calm occur only in the film's first act, before things go sideways. The rest of the 96 minutes are brutal and intense; they don’t let up, in part thanks to the deafening sound design, which does an incredible job of putting the audience in the characters' shoes. At first, I thought the theater had the volume up too high, but it became clear that the film is intentionally loud. Gunfire, explosions, radio chatter, and fighter jets buzzing right over the streets in a maneuver they call a “show of force” only let up when characters are deafened by the effects of being near an IED when it explodes.
Warfare doesn’t have any of the typical tropes of Hollywood war films. No tragic backstories or characters reminiscing about what awaits them back home. No romanticization of brave acts and no slow-motion fetishization of violence. The film completely eschews dramatic depth and characterization in favor of a visceral representation of the moment-to-moment events, with no time for reflection.
Detractors might say that the film fails to properly convey the horrors of war because it doesn’t depict the suffering and consequences of the aftermath on the people caught in the crossfire, aside from seeing the residents of the occupied apartments huddled in fear or witnessing the ruins the fighting creates out of their home. However, that’s because it’s not what the movie is about. Warfare succeeds in doing what it set out to do: to create a plausible simulacrum of the events as they transpired in November 2006, depicting the terror these soldiers experienced with claustrophobic intensity from their own point of view. The movie isn’t about outside perspectives and doesn’t see its job as moralizing the events or their consequences.
Warfare. Credit: Murray Close, Courtesy of A24
It doesn’t revel in ideas of American exceptionalism either; these are frightened men who don’t want to be where they are and are only concerned with getting out of a bad situation alive. I haven’t stopped thinking of a scene where the Americans send out their terrified Iraqi scouts first to see if they get killed. That’s not something filmmakers concerned with glorifying the U.S. military would include.
Warfare is an intense experience meant to be seen on the big screen, especially to get the most mileage from its stellar sound design. I recommend seeing it in a theater.
Warfare opens in theaters nationwide on April 11, 2025.
