Kimber Myers
Director Alex Garland has made humanlike AI, wild mutations, and a near-future American civil war believable. (Whatever the fuck Men was, its merits were not based on its believability.) So it’s unsurprising that he brings the same level of verisimilitude to 21st-century battle in Warfare, which is based on the real-life military experience of his co-director and co-writer Ray Mendoza in Iraq in 2006. Every second of Warfare feels authentic, at least to this viewer who is grateful to have only experienced war through a screen. It is a grueling, grim, gory hell, which I mean as both a credit to the filmmakers and a warning to potential viewers.
I was prepared for the requisite blood and guts spilling from the tragically young bodies of these soldiers, but I wasn’t appropriately steeled for their screams. There’s no score in Warfare; instead, moments of silence are punctuated by men’s wails, gunfire, and explosions, as well as the muffled aftermath of the cacophony when eardrums are as rattled as nerves. On the big screen, Warfare is almost unbearably loud, though it may be the disturbing nature of the noise as much as the volume. I saw it on the biggest IMAX screen in the country, where a severed leg abandoned in the street was as big as a car. David J. Thompson’s cinematography gets far closer to the action than I’ve ever wanted to be. It makes for an immersive, demanding watch where the audience cannot escape the violence and trauma.
A24 has basically paid millions for a 95-minute anti-recruitment video for the military. Warfare begins with camaraderie: a big group of Navy SEALs sit around a small TV, cheering and fist-pumping along as the thong-unitard-clad women gyrate in the music video for Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.” This is the mid-aughts, after all. Their goofing around briefly continues as they move out to the streets of Ramadi, Iraq, where they look for a house to commandeer to use as a lookout.
They enter the house in the middle of the night without warning, sequestering the family that lives there in a single room. They set up their gear upstairs, with a sniper (Cosmo Jarvis) sweeping the surrounding area for combatants. Tension grows as an attack appears inevitable, with the soldiers and the viewers bracing for impact. When it arrives, it’s seat-shaking and ear-splitting, but the lulls between violence don’t provide any respite.
Warfare isn’t a military epic that comments on big themes in addition to showing military action. Instead, it’s notable for its lack of a point of view about what’s happening on screen, beyond the sheer hell of it all and the bond created between those experiencing it. Garland and Mendoza may be trying to address the impossibility of having a perspective on the morality of war, especially when you’re in the thick of it, but this lack of a statement makes the brutal viewing experience leave you hollow. That may, in fact, have been the filmmakers’ goal beyond just showing what happened and paying tribute to the sacrifices of these men, but it’s still a bloody, muddy mess that feels pointless when we finally reach the credits with photos of the real-life men alongside the actors who are playing them.
Like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and plenty of other war movies over the years, Warfare has a large cast of recognizable young male actors, including Jarvis, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, and Kit Connor. Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays Ray, the writer-director’s on-screen analog, who mans the radio and desperately calls for an evacuation of the casualties. Performances are strong across the board, adding to what’s in Garland and Mendoza’s script to establish and differentiate these uniformed men. Each reacts differently to the experience, but the horror of it seems universal among them.
Warfare is capably made by everyone above and below the line. It’s entirely successful at what it wants to do, but it’s unclear what it wants to say beyond creating a realistic experience. This is a punishing movie that’s difficult to watch and even harder to recommend, despite the talent involved.
B-
“Warfare” is in theaters this weekend.
