Warfare

Alex Garland’s career as a director has consisted of just five films now, despite being a heralded screenwriter for over two decades. Garland’s directorial work consists primarily of dystopian scenarios and nihilistic portrayals of worlds on the brink. And although his previous two films, Men and Civil War, failed to hit the heights of his first two directorial outings, Ex Machina and Annihilation, Garland has always shown a real prowess for hard-hitting and thought-provoking filmmaking. For the first time, he serves as a co-director to former Navy SEAL, Ray Mendoza. Mendoza takes the rare opportunity for his first directorial feature to recreate a failed surveillance mission in Iraq, the very same mission that he survived nearly 20 years ago. This unique approach aims to immerse audiences in the nuts-and-bolts of modern warfare in possibly the most realistic depiction of combat ever put to screen. The result is a terrifying film experience that benefits from an unfiltered lens.

Courtesy A24

Warfare opens on its only moment of levity. A group of soldiers are huddled around a small computer screen, hooting and hollering at the Eric Prydz “Call on Me” music video, showcasing their tight-knit brotherhood. From then, we are immediately thrown into a surveillance mission in Ramadi, Iraq. This group of soldiers consists of Ray (Reservation Dogs‘ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Sam (Joseph Quinn), Erik (Will Poulter), Elliot (Cosmo Jarvis), Tommy (Kit Connor), Macdonald (Michael Gandolfini) and Frank (John Taylor Smith). We find the SEALs taking cover in a house, who quickly take the home from the family that lives inside, and stay hunkered down to monitor local activity. Quickly, the mission goes to hell once their cover is blown and an all-out assault is waged against them. With an unknown, and seemingly endless, barrage of local fighters surrounding them, the SEALs have no choice but to sit and fend for their lives while they wait for backup to rescue them.

Directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza aim for maximum realism with their gripping, visceral recounting of an impossible mission. You won’t find any overarching narrative threads or character development; you’re simply dropped in the middle of a terrible situation with no clear reason why with survival being the only option. Garland’s best work is when he is channelling his most nihilistic impulses and Warfare is no exception. The pairing of Garland and Mendoza works exceptionally as Garland’s staging for action has always been superb, but bringing Mendoza into the fold allows for a rare authenticity not typically seen in a recent major release.

Warfare exists, not to glorify, but to present an unfiltered glimpse at the real-life effects of war and it’s greater damage. This is an anti-war film through and through, even if Truffaut would have disagreed. There’s been some discourse since the initial trailer dropped, with many blasting the film for possibly being military propaganda. However, in films that are accused of being jingoistic, they all have moments of spectacle or moments that make you internally go, “oh wow”. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a single shot or image in Warfare that isn’t spent in terror. So much of the film removes the Hollywood sheen of portraying war for what it is; chaotic, cruel and brutal. It’s truly hard to look at some of these images and maintain that this is some sort of recruitment film. In fact, you could make the case that more young adults that see this film will be steered clear of wanting to join the armed forces. 

Courtesy A24

Having Mendoza, who was there and lived through this event, behind the camera allows for a stronger sense of intimacy, which is used in bringing the unfolding horror to screen in such an impactful, visceral fashion. The filmmakers are not interested in sugar-coating the event, trying to portray good guys versus bad guys, but instead makes it clear that this event simply did not need to happen. It’s obvious that these men should not have been there and their presence only escalates tensions. That doesn’t make their rescue any less important, but Mendoza and Garland make it a point to highlight the men affected at the forefront. Warfare is a difficult film to sit through, but it offers up some of the best of what modern filmmaking is capable of. This is not an action film, this is a film about survival and what that looks like.

Both filmmakers excel at taking this chaos and making the audience feel every grueling moment of it. If you’re lucky enough to experience the film in Imax, you’ll feel as though the overpowering sound mix will blow the roof off the building. Garland and Mendoza are methodical in their pacing, making the time spent before the siege nerve-jangling as it’s clear only one pin has to drop in order for everything to go to shit. Once things do, the film itself feels like it’s in a state of disarray with overlapping radio chatter mixed in over pivotal moments of dialogue, allowing the confusion and disorientation to take full effect.

Courtesy A24

Warfare is a visceral and thoroughly oppressive film experience. Director Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza bring together a real-time account of a real-life mission with pinpoint accuracy and perhaps the most realistic depiction of war ever put to screen. This is not a film interested in peeling back the layers of its characters, but rather to show the immediate toil that weighs on the people at the forefront of war. Whereas past war films may try to limit any semblance of spectacle, Warfare forgoes these tropes by subverting them entirely. This is the kind of war film where it’s guttural screams of terror and anguish linger most than any one piece of action.

Warfare is now playing in theaters.