Alex Garland teams with war veteran Ray Mendoza to make an unsparing account of real-world conflict. Our review of Warfare:
Amid the dust, the smoke and the blood, we can scarcely distinguish one face from another. In the shock and numbness following the explosion, all we can hear is the voice of a soldier repeating, “Oh my god. Oh my god…”
This is Warfare, a forensic account of a real-world incident which took place in the Second Iraq War in 2006. In some respects, it’s a companion piece to 2024’s Civil War, and its making-of backstory is intrinsically linked to that film. Writer-director Alex Garland’s military advisor was Ray Mendoza, himself a veteran of the Iraq conflict. Garland and Mendoza got on so well that they decided to collaborate again, this time on a more equal footing; both are credited here as writers and directors.
Their film is based on Mendoza’s own experiences and those involved in an operation which took place in the city of Ramadi almost 20 years ago. A team of US Navy SEALs is tasked with providing support for Marine ground forces. As their mission begins, the operatives choose an ordinary-looking suburban house as their base of operations, its windows looking out on a huddled town square where children play and parents drink coffee. But then the team’s discovered by insurgents, and finds itself surrounded and subjected to a deadly siege.
Among the soldiers, clad in combat fatigues and cumbersome-looking equipment, is Will Poulter as the captain in charge of the operation; Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the latter playing the young Ray Mendoza. Poulter, whose gravitas seems to be growing the older he gets, provides a particularly commanding presence among the ensemble, but Warfare is less about characterisation and more about the tension and mundane horror of the situation itself.
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Mendoza and Garland have a journalistic eye for detail: it’s difficult to recall another film that takes quite so much time demonstrating how soldiers take down notes in little spiral-bound pads, or the specific way they communicate and relay information, or how they’ll arrange mattresses to create a makeshift sniper’s nest.
In its early, quieter moments, Warfare vaguely recalls Jarhead, Sam Mendes’ 2005 drama set during the 1989 Gulf War. But where that film was pointedly about the unglamorous tedium of soldiering, Garland and Mendoza subtly indicate that Warfare is building to a crisis which could go off at any moment. And when that trigger’s pulled, the effect is devastating; in devoting so much time to murmured communications and near silence, the contrasting roar of violence is nerve-jangling. Warfare’s claustrophobic setting is a little like John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 mixed with the dusty rawness of Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
What Warfare conspicuously avoids, though, is the pitfall of turning the attacking forces into a faceless hive mind – something war movies (including Black Hawk Down) have often done since the beginning of cinema. The insurgent forces that lay siege to the SEALs’ location aren’t dehumanised here so much as de-emphasised – a subtle yet important distinction. Enemy fighters are barely glimpsed, save for one particularly captivating late sequence. Rather than allow audiences the thrill of a rising body count, Warfare instead focuses on the growing physical and psychological toll of the SEALs’ experiences.
The cast – especially Poulter – brilliantly portray the stress of an unravelling mission, while Garland and Mendoza are unsparing in their depiction of what bullets and shrapnel can do to flesh and bone. In its portrayal of pain and suffering, this writer couldn’t help thinking about the 1985 drama Come And See – another highly disturbing film about the physical and mental toll of conflict.
Barring an opening needle drop from Swedish DJ Eric Prydz, the filmmakers don’t give us the comfort of a rousing score to cling to, either: the only soundtrack you’ll find here is gunfire, cries of desperation, and the fascinating whine of a tank’s gun turret as it winds into position. Everything in Warfare is stripped down to its essentials, from its documentary-style image grain to the use of the font Courier on its opening titles. The film doesn’t come in with a political angle or any particular judgement on the conflict itself; nor does it offer much in the way of the solemn patriotism of, say, Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor or Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.
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That may frustrate some movie-goers, much as Civil War’s lack of side-taking appeared to. Meanwhile, the rawness of Warfare's imagery and sound threatens to become so overwhelming that it risks making viewers disassociate or flee the cinema entirely. But in its own, matter-of-fact way, Warfare can’t help but illuminate how combat somehow devalues everyone involved. There’s a repeated command throughout the film to gather up bits of equipment, even as bullets are whizzing through windows; it’s as though, to the military, something as disposable as a sledgehammer has as much of a price tag attached to it as a human being. There’s something almost surreal about a soldier risking his life to retrieve a tool you could readily buy at a local hardware store.
It aptly sums up the sentiment that flesh-and-blood soldiers are but one part in a bigger, unfathomably expensive military machine. And it’s the theme of human vulnerability that Warfare keeps going back to; well-trained yet mortal young men trying to do their jobs and keep a lid on their emotions. They make mistakes under pressure; their sleeves get snagged on door handles, they slip and injure themselves and struggle to put on tourniquettes. It’s in these moments, where the suppressed humanity emerges from the regimented militarism, that Warfare goes from blood-curdling to unexpectedly moving.
As Will Poulter’s increasingly desperate character rasps into his communicator in one scene: “You’ll find us. Just look for the smoke and blood.”
Warfare is due for release in UK cinemas on the 18th April.
