War Is Hell, As Told By Those Who Survived It

They say nothing forms stronger bonds than the shared experience of combat, and that the feeling of deep fraternity forged under fire is as close, if not closer, than the love one harbors for family and country. Warfare understands this. A movie about a single siege on a single day in 2006 — one given a stunning sense of verisimilitude by filmmaker/real-life participant Ray Mendoza, and a hyperventilating sense of dread by his co-director/longtime apocalypse-channeler Alex Garland — this extraordinary portrait of a military firefight works double-time to recreate what it’s like to be in “the shit.” You get the sheer tedium before the storm, the tsunami of chaos and noise once things go down, the way that survival instincts honed by training automatically kicks in for these soldiers, and the shock of seeing a friend become a fatality within a split second. War is hell, the film reminds you, while also being kind enough to hold the door for viewers as it ushers them into the scalding heat.

Yet what this film really nails is the battalion camaraderie that goes beyond spending hours, days, weeks with the same folks and flips into something else entirely once shots are fired. From the second you meet the Navy SEALs who will have to scrap their way out of a house in Ramadi, Iraq, that’s surrounded by insurgents, you’re encouraged to see them as a stand-alone entity — many faces, numerous limbs, all one organism. Never mind that these dudes are whooping, hollering and jumping up and down in a state of hormonal overload, all over a music video resembling a cheesy ’80s aerobics instructional. They’re still functioning in perfect sync long before the melee starts. So many war movies play up the visceral aspects of battle, emphasizing the rush at the expense of context and any human toll attached to the carnage. Everything gets reduced to hardcore war-nography. Mendoza and Garland have bigger, bolder aims. Their goal is pure unit-cohesion porn.

After playing voyeur to the commandos’ after-hours endeavors, Warfare flips to a complete 180 scenario; instead of a loud, raucous scream-along in a fluorescently lit room, we find ourselves watching these same soldiers silently moving down a dark street in unison. The mission is to infiltrate a residential apartment in the middle of the night, much to the freaked-out occupants’ dismay, and set up camp on the second floor. Ground forces will be passing through this hot spot the next day. These SEALs, along with a few marines and two translators, are here to ensure everybody enters and exits Ramadi without incident.

Once daylight comes, we get a better look at the individual soldiers, some of which are distinguished from others courteous of familiar, famous faces. The cast is like a roll call of Next-Gen Hollywood circa 2025: There’s Will Poulter (Midsommar, Death of a Unicorn), running point on the whole operation, and Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, George Harrison in the upcoming Beatles’ biopics) as a petty officer keeping watch on the perimeter. Over in the next room, Cosmo Jarvis (Shōgun, The Alto Knights) is manning a sniper rifle trained on some shady looking locals. Shooting the shit with a fellow grunt in the kitchen is Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark, Saturday Night). Kit Connor (Heartstopper), Noah Centineo (To All the Boys) and Charles Melton (May December) all report for duty as well. As for Mendoza’s screen counterpart, he’s played, in a especially strong turn, by Reservation Dogs‘ D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai.

Hints of personalities, personal histories, in-jokes and longstanding tensions occasionally surface, but the men you see here are all functioning as cogs in the military’s well-oiled machinery. Who’s-who stats are almost beside the point. It’s Jarvis’s sharpshooter, however, that’s reporting what appears to be communications between various parties throughout the neighborhood. They were expecting some sort of possible attack, especially once civilians begin leaving the streets in droves. The live grenade that gets lobbed through the sniper’s perch is still a surprise. Suddenly, enemy shooters on roofs surround the troops. Plans for air support had been scuttled for various reasons, but several armored transports are on the way to evacuate them from the area. Once these tanks show up, however, everything goes completely FUBAR.

From here, Warfare sticks to what feels like a rescue procedural in real time, as the men tend to the wounded, mourn fallen comrades, co-ordinate countermeasures and, to put things in less military-jargon terms, keeps their collective asses out a sling. As anyone familiar with Garland’s work can tell you, he specializes in both intellectually challenging thrills and highly visceral chills, though mileage may vary on how effective his signature combo works in something like, say, last year’s provocation-bait Civil War. (That project, by the way, was where the writer-director met Mendoza, who consulted on the film’s climactic White House showdown.)

You can’t discount Mendoza’s contributions, of course, given that his boots were literally on the ground that day. It’s Garland’s ability to add a sense of distance to scenes brimming with exhilaration — and vice versa — that helps make his partner’s eye-witness accounts incredibly effective here, however. You never forget you’re watching actors, albeit rigorously trained ones, yet the filmmaking lends a feeling that they’ve somehow stepped into in-progress war reportage rather than onto a set. Ditto the ambiguity that’s also part and parcel of his storytelling. There are some that will inevitably view this as more romanticized, pro-military propaganda, and others who will easily characterize this as more of an anti-war parable. The movie itself may come to praise these men rather than bury them, but the lens with which you process this true story through nonetheless remains subjective. Tipping hands remain off the scales.

The only agenda in Warfare, in other words, is to give you a sense of not just what happened but how everything felt while it was happening. A tall order, to be sure, but one that Garland, Mendoza, their cast and the crew pull off shockingly well. Yes, authenticity is key, as well as the sheer battering the film puts you through — the sensory overload (or post-explosion, the partial sensory muting), the emphasis of shock over awe. You will assuredly leave the theater shook. But pay attention to that opening series of title cards, which start out as a list of scene-setting stats: This was the mission, here is the date, these were the people involved.

Then a disclaimer mentions that this look back was compiled through various interviews with those who survived that harrowing attack. “This film uses only their memories,” reads the next card. It’s their version of what happened, their traumatic recollections, their emotional conflicts, their gratitude for each other and for still drawing breath. They are now the ones controlling the narrative. And we are now the ones bearing witness.