The closest we’ve gotten to understanding modern warfare is The Hurt Locker. But even that film was more about the disillusionment of men during war, not about the tactics of fighting a war. Alex Garland has been living around this concept for a while now, giving us bits of this will Annihilation and Civil War. But Warfare strips all the story trimmings down to the basics…to make everyone truly understand what fighting has been like for US soldiers since the mid 2000s.
Spoiler Alert: it’s as horrifying as you’d expect. We’re transported into Ramadi Iraq in 2006. A Navy Seal team led by Erik (Will Poulter) takes control of a housing unit, to monitor the goings on in the town. On the DL the Iraqi fighters group together and launch their attack on Erik’s battalion, injuring several men. Erik orders comms officer Ray Mendoza (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) to radio for help, especially from another Seal team nearby led by Jake (Charles Melton).
Warfare blurs the lines between documentary and feature film. The story is barely a story at all: Navy Seals have to survive fighting and get out of Ramadi Iraq. We get characters, but frankly characters are not the point of this movie. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza have no desire to put in any political beliefs, opinions, or even civilian casualties in this movie. It’s just pure visceral war tactics and countertactics. Garland makes you feel like you’re part of a documentary crew there to shoot the Seal Team’s story, as objectively as possible. Being in that house is as tense as you can get. You can smell Sniper Elliot Miller’s (Cosmo Jarvis) sweat on his forehead, as he slowly watches Iraqi counter insurgents covertly gather fighters and look in their direction more than a few times. That level of quiet grows very quickly unnerving; you’ll find yourself clenching up, waiting for something likely horrible to happen.
As disquieting as that silence is, the noise is worse; once the bullets and grenades start flying, we’re in the middle of pure terrifying chaos. This is really where the characters start to show up, as all that “hoo rah” patriotism and male bravado right at the beginning comes crashing to visceral reality. Like in all war movies, the real heroes shine at the darkest moments, and not every soldier is up for the real stakes of war. Garland’s camera goes person to person, to show how specifically different it is across the board; there’s really no way anyone can know until they’re deep int he sh*t. The most interesting one is Will Poulter’s Erik. He seems like a perfectly capable commander, but he finds himself in the wrong places at the wrong time, and loses his ability to focus and lead when the team needs him most. Warfare, smartly, paints him as more a tragic figure of circumstance, who at least acknowledges this and cedes his power to someone better equipped at that time to lead the battalion. This second half Garland elevates the scope every now and again with broader camera angles or drone surveillance to remind people of other pieces of the US war tactics. The use of airplanes here was something I’ve never seen in a war movie, and feels very much more a modern tool than what we’ve seen of military planes in the past. By the way, all that tension you’re building up early on? It only gets worse as Warfare continues, as your body will contort in all sorts of ways as you witness the real life consequences of what happens to our troops when they fight.
If anyone is considering joining the military, Warfare is mandatory viewing. No movie like this in the modern day captures what someone is going to go through on a minute to minute basis during a battle, in all its heroism and terror. I hope this becomes part of the high school canon, as the violence is brutal but necessary to help kids understand what the “war in Iraq” looks like. Bravo to you Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza: I welcome as many films like this as you can make, all over the world.