By Mark Fields
Hyper-Real Combat Drama Evokes Microcosm of Iraqi War
For Warfare, director Alex Garland (Civil War, Annihilation) has collaborated with an actual Iraqi veteran and Navy Seal, Ray Mendoza, to create a gritty, even grim depiction of close combat that feels uncomfortably real. Gone are the poignant back stories, the swell of victorious music, the jingoistic sense of triumph over our adversaries. Instead, Warfare gives the viewer – seemingly in real time — a genuine sense of the intensity and tragedy of a mission gone sideways.
Set in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006, Warfare follows the activities of a sniper unit over the course of a single day. They forcibly occupy a small home, in essence kidnapping its residents. And then, the men spend the rest of the day watching and waiting as the local citizens plan an armed response. The film starts slowly, filled with the tedium of a methodically planned action. That introductory interlude is incredibly tense as we viewers intuit that something is bound to happen. When that something inevitably transpires, the tense only mounts, and the soldiers in the unit clearly reveals themselves to be the young, scared boys we expected them to be.
The cast – led by D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai as Ray (co-director Mendoza’s younger self) – includes many promising young film and TV stars including Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Noah Centineo, and Michael Gandolfini. None of the characters is especially well delineated, but perhaps that is beside the point. The emphasis is on the peril these young men face together, and how, if possible, they will extract themselves. In fact, Warfare is not so much a coherent story as it is a slice of military life in all its risk and sacrifice.
The film runs a compact 95 minutes, and moves efficiently the whole time. Garland, who previous films have often been studies in deliberate pacing, balances the careful prep work of the unit with the explosions of violence and danger.
Given the hyper-realism and the timeliness of the setting, I found myself not just concerned for the rescue of these soldiers but also appalled by the destruction their little incursion left in its wake for both the American fighters and for their Iraqi adversaries, mostly civilian. I don’t know if it was the intent of the filmmakers, but the futility and devastation of combat for all involved was the greatest take-away for me.
Official Trailer
