Gemma Creagh stands to attention in her review of gritty drama Warfare.
Brutal, skilful, and immersive, Warfare is a viciously visceral assault on the senses for 95 of the tensest minutes that recent cinema has to offer.
Truth is at the rapidly pounding heart of this story. A creator whose back catalogue is often conceptual and laden with clever metaphor, Alex Garland worked with Ray Mendoza, who was crew on his dystopian futuristic feature Civil War. Mendoza was Garland’s military adviser, drawing from his 16 years as a Navy SEAL to bring a sense of reality to on-screen battles. Now, it’s his turn to build the narrative too. Garland asked Mendoza if he had a story he wanted to tell…and he certainly did.
Warfare opens in Ramadi, Iraq, as a team of mostly fresh-faced Navy SEALs gather around a TV. They bop along with the scantily clad dancers from the music video to Eric Prydz’s catchy “Call on Me”, an anthem of the mid-2000s. The year is 2006, the height of the Iraq War, with W. in the Oval Office. This moment of lewd laughter and levity is short-lived. Wearing 60 lb of authentic combat gear, the cast throw themselves into their roles: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai embodies co-director Ray Mendoza, the mission leader; Will Poulter plays the officer in charge; and Cosmo Jarvis portrays Elliott Miller — a sniper, medic, and Mendoza’s real-life best friend.The closing titles dedicate this film to him. This unit is sent on a surveillance mission to monitor insurgent activity. Armed and running in formation under the cover of darkness, they invade a modest two-story home. Once inside, they wake two terrified Iraqi families, taking them hostage, albeit humanely. Mendoza and Elliott are tasked with surveillance. Through a semi-covered window, Elliott watches from the vantage point of his rifle’s scope, scanning for danger among the civilian population bustling just outside.
For the Iraqis, this is life as usual; they’re shopping, talking, and eating, children play in the street. By contrast, these tense soldiers hold their positions, and it’s in these quiet moments of waiting, where an excruciating tension builds. This is punctuated only by the playful exchanges of colleagues, one even spits contaminates a shared water. There’s no exposition, no photos of girlfriends back home. A surly Elliott pokes fun at the enthusiastic new guy, LT McDonald. Michael Gandolfini brings a quiet warmth to the LT, showing skill reminiscent of his father with more than just a passing resemblance. In Warfare, the present moment is all they have, and these relationships, friendships, loyalties, and hierarchy are implied by the nature of the quips, and teasing. This workplace banter is the kind you’d hear in any mostly male-occupied work space — a construction site, shipyard — only deep in enemy territory, the stakes impossibly high.
As the energy shifts outside, Elliott and Mendoza keep keen eyes on several questionable figures. They pass this information on to their command unit over the radio, gauging threat levels. Soon, they spot a suspicious character, then a gun — and finally the crowd outside dispurses. They’ve been made, and the operation is unraveling fast. Surrounded on all fronts, the squad begs for an exfiltration, but when the tanks finally arrive, they are ambushed by al-Qaeda insurgents. An IED explodes. Dust fills the air. A ringing blocks out all sound. It takes a minute to process the damage. Body parts are strewn on the ground, and Elliott and Sam (Joseph Quinn) are both gravely injured. Also caught in the blast, Erik and Mendoza struggle to process what happened as their concussions set in. No longer able to lead, Erik passes command to Mendoza, who must now try, against all odds, to get his team to safety as the insurgents close in around them.
With such an accomplished and long-standing career, penning a script for Garland is old hat — but this was a first for Mendoza. From the beginning, their goal was clear with this collaboration: the story must be as factually accurate as possible. Working together, Garland and Mendoza did their homework. After being caught in that real-life IED blast all those years ago, Mendoza suffered a concussion, leaving his memories of the day fragmented. To piece the sequence of events back together, they ran through the timeline with each of Mendoza’s teammates, slowly filling in the gaps. It became a forensic detective game — an exercise in journalism. The more men they interviewed, the more the reality of the day came together.
Technically, this film is an exceptional feat — executed with precision across the entire range of creative disciplines. The sound design plays a crucial role in the cinematic language, relying on diegetic cues—like abrupt silence or the distant pops of gunfire—to shift perspective and mimic the lived experience of what those soldiers’ heard on the day. In terms of tension, Warfare stands shoulder to shoulder with any horror, home invasion, or violent tragedy. However, its power lies in the pared-back nature of the storytelling. Each element, from the choreography of the action to the violence conveyed through production design, is handled with skill. Those battle sequences are long, complex, and gritty, following multiple characters, and prove utterly relentless — but in the best possible way.
The cast underwent a rigorous three-week boot camp, in heavy gear, the same training as if they were actually going to war, led by Mendoza. This bond bleeds into the shorthand and unified stance these men create on screen. As the threat escalates, the emotional choices being made are not those of your standard gung-ho war film. There’s nuance, tears, stress, and overwhelm; these are mostly young men put in an impossible situation. And apparently their visible exhaustion at points was real.
Almost two decades after the events of this film took place, the film’s meaning is open to interpretation. Perhaps Warfare is intended as a metaphor for the futility of war and of the soldiers’ presence in Iraq? That’s my inference, at least. In the final scenes, the camera lingers on the bombed and crumbling Ramadi neighbourhood. After the troops retreat, there’s a beat — a moment of silence that hangs in the air. Inside their house, the hostage families take in the devastation. Their home is crumbling, filled with dust and rubble. Outside, in the absence of the Americans, the locals begin to emerge once more, reclaiming the street as their own. What was this operation — this war even — for exactly? Yet, as the final credits roll, and Elliott’s dedication fills the screen, the real-life photographs of the soldiers grace the screen — a slideshow of faces from both sides of the conflict who populated the story. Some are obscured, others wave triumphantly to the camera from the set. Warfare could be a cautionary tale, a testament to survival, or more likely something far more nuanced and complex altogether.
Warfare is in cinemas 18th April 2025.
