Directed by: Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza
Distributed by: A24
Written by Anna Harrison
60/100
“Civil War,” Alex Garland’s previous feature, was a hot topic of discourse on Twitter for quite some time last year (my opening paragraphs in that review, upon reread, come off as smug and condescending instead of vaguely witty as intended—sorry). There, the political divide was never the point; rather, it was about tearing down American exceptionalism and the dehumanization we all experience when viewing violence through a lens. What does it mean, then, that Garland’s next film (co-written and co-directed with Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza) is nothing but violence through a lens?
“Warfare” is an exercise in stress, based on Mendoza’s experiences as a young man in Iraq, and the requisite violence that comes with, well, warfare. Its taut 90-minute runtime bombards viewers with blood, sweat, and tears, from IED explosions to the prick of a morphine pen. Are we distanced from the terrors or, as our ears are bombarded by gunshots and explosions, do we experience things just as Mendoza did and clap for the bravery and camaraderie of his squad? “Warfare” is a movie tangled up in itself, unable to say anything more than this: war is hell.
The movie takes place all within the same Iraqi house in Ramadi, where Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) and his team are doing… something. Mendoza and Garland waste no time with exposition but rather set us down in the middle of a contextless mission full of army lingo that will fly over the head of anyone not a veteran. Over time, we learn what a few of the phrases mean, but Mendoza is not interested in holding your hand. We learn little of the soldiers; though the cast is dotted with rising stars like Kit Connor, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Michael Gandolfini, the characters are almost all interchangeable. Then again, how much time do you have in a warzone and in a SEAL unit to showcase your individuality? The men sit in the house for hours and scope out their enemy, scribbling notes to each other and peeing in cups to pass the time. War, it turns out, is boring—that is, until someone tosses a grenade in the house, and then the firefight begins.
It is, in a word, horrific. It is loud and bloody; a cacophony that sends the heart racing and makes the seats shake. Tanks to help the men evacuate may be only yards away outside, but it may as well be across the ocean. The house becomes the world, and Mendoza is unrelenting as the film progresses in near real-time. Some characters are graphically wounded, some cry, some fall silent. Joseph Quinn and Cosmo Jarvis scream so much that I can’t imagine how their vocal chords remained intact through filming.
But for a film that tries to be so singular in intensity, cracks still show. “Warfare” finds itself caught between praise and condemnation, never brave enough to blame anyone—or anything—outright but not cowardly enough to shy away from the dehumanization of war. There are two unnamed Iraqi translators used as, essentially, meat shields, yet they seem to disappear from the movie entirely in the second act. We see the American soldiers forcibly remove Iraqi civilians from their beds in the middle of the night as their house becomes a battleground, but the cuts to homeowners are few and far between. Will Poulter’s Erik admits, “I’m fucked up,” but there is never any discussion of why the American apparatus sent the men to ransack this house in the first place. Noah Centineo didn’t need to look at the camera and say, “The Iraq War was a terrible mistake, Americans did a lot of war crimes, and I’m a bad person,” but don’t sidestep the issues if you choose to show them.
The film hammers you throughout its runtime with the terror and pain of war, and what should have been its ending shot is a stark reminder of the civilian toll, but then it cuts to happy-go-lucky behind-the-scenes footage of the cast and crew, including the men who inspired the characters, laughing and having a grand old time. A picture of the Iraqi family is shown, faces blurred, in a harrowing image before it’s replaced by one of the cast with their real-life counterparts, all giving the bird. The family is erased, just as the civilian toll of the Iraq War—and America’s part in it—is often buried. For a movie that has touted itself as an unflinching look at war, “Warfare” avoids what might have been its most interesting point of view, and no sound design, no matter how excellent, can cover that up.
“Warfare” Trailer
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