‘Warfare’ Review

‘Warfare’, the new film from Alex Garland, opens with a bang, and I don’t mean gunfire. We open on all of the soldiers surrounding a small laptop screen, watching the hyper sexualized music video for ‘Call on Me’. The soldiers laugh, sing along, and jump around to the video. This scene serves to set the time and place for the action to follow, but also to show a side of these warriors that will not be shown again.

There is not another shot in the film that does not take place in the streets of Ramadi, Iraq. All dialogue is mission specific, there are no other glimpses of the interior lives of these soldiers, no further hints at what these people are like back home. In the midst of battle, any lack of focus on the minute to minute threats could mean death.

‘Warfare’ is a lean, brutal 90 minute action sequence. It neither glorifies nor hides from the brutalities of war. The first 30 minutes of the film is filled with silences, long drawn out scenes of the soldiers watching and waiting for something to happen. The anticipation, the anxiety, the dread continues to build. It’s a queasy buildup, such that by the time the shooting actually starts, it almost comes as a relief. I didn’t realize how much I was clenching until the moment that the soldiers find themselves in a battle. The event I was afraid for was now here, and there’s nothing more to do except work through it.

Of course the relief is short lived, as the very real, graphic violence of combat continually escalates throughout the rest of the film’s runtime. Once the fighting begins, it continues fast and furious. ‘Warfare’ presents the wounds of battle graphically, but also doesn’t shy away from the less talked about physical impact of warfare. Grenades might not kill you, but they’ll shake you up, as these soldiers acknowledge potential concussions throughout the film’s runtime. And these soldiers do not fit into convenient character arcs, as the action is happening too quickly to stay in any one place, position, or mindset. After witnessing a friend get seriously wounded, some of the soldiers stand around, unresponsive and shellshocked. But they do not stay this way for the rest of the film, instead they eventually snap out of it and re-engage in the battle, knowing that to do otherwise would help nobody. As exuberant and silly as these men are in the opening scene set to ‘Call on Me’, they are just as serious and committed to their and their teammates survival for the remainder of the film. These are complicated people. Some of them are essentially children, they are awkward coworkers, and they are warriors.

The direction of the action sequences by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza is masterful, using the silences to set up the overwhelming volume of combat perfectly. The direction is crisp and clear, the geometry of the battlefield is easily understandable even as the enemy combatants themselves are impossible to see. The sound design specifically is a masterclass in establishing an audio fog of war. In one scene after an explosion, the audio begins very muffled as the soldiers recover from the initial shock, but then, as soon as the action cuts back into the house, the screams of an injured soldier function as a jump scare. And from there, competing radio communications clash with the in person communication of the soldiers which in turn is overwhelmed by the screams of the injured and the gunfire outside. This layered audio cacophony emphasizes how overwhelming and confusing warfare can be, as everybody tries their best to make the right decision at all times. Eventually the communicator unplugs his radio, bringing back some semblance of quiet, even as the screams continue to underline the horror of the moment.

The cast is reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s ‘Black Hawk Down’, but where that film featured A and B-List actors in even the smallest of roles, this one features stars of the indie scene, such as Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn and Cosmo Jarvis. You may not know all their names, but you’ll almost certainly recognize them from prestige films and TV shows. In a film with fast paced action, in which there isn’t much time to dwell on the individual character names and personalities, it helps the viewer to have familiar faces to latch on to. All of the performances are strong, much like their characters, working individually but also as a member of an ensemble that is believable and engaging.

In the end, this film is not titled ‘The Battle of Ramadi’, it is called ‘Warfare’, indicating that the specifics of the battle and its strategic importance are less significant than the grounded experience of combat. We are never told why these soldiers take over the house, we are never told afterward what this battle meant for the larger war. For these soldiers, that doesn’t matter. We see them enter a house, we see them wait to be attacked, we see them get attacked, and we see them leave. The desire for greater context misses the point of this film, which is to present the immediacy, the minute by minute decision making that can result in life or death for the boots-on-the-ground soldiers. ‘Warfare’ is a ruthless, thrilling action film with genuine emotional weight emphasizing that this type of combat which may seem meaningless given all we know about the war, is anything but for those who lived it.

Warfare
Rated R for intense war violence and bloody/grisly images, and language throughout.
Running Time: 1 hour and 35 minutes

Director Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland
Writers Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland
Stars D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Michael Gandolfini
Rating R
Running Time 95 Minutes
Genres Action, Drama, War