Warfare (2025)
Directed by: Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza
Premise: Based on true events. Set in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006, a platoon of Navy SEALs fights local insurgents while waiting for an evacuation.
What Works: The advertising materials for Warfare have billed it as a portrait of contemporary combat and the movie succeeds at that. The picture possesses tremendous detail for the soldiering techniques, the use of technology, and the vocabulary of the military in the War on Terror era. It’s an immersive film, putting us alongside a platoon of Navy SEALs, and Warfare strikes a balance between the conventions of Hollywood’s buddies-in-action combat movies and something more honest and realistic. A lot of movies of this kind tend to slot the characters into cliché types and emphasize the unique bonds between soldiers facing combat together. That’s partly true of Warfare. Each of the main characters is visually distinct and they act heroically but this is not a romantic vision of combat and the soldiers possess a flawed humanity. These are real people and the filmmakers acknowledge that many of them are vicenarian men. The picture does not adhere to typical combat film scenarios. There’s no taking the hill, for example. There is a longstanding truism about war, that it consists of long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That’s the approach taken by the filmmakers of Warfare. The movie is never boring but the early portion gets the monotony and anxiety of waiting for something to happen. Once the action starts it is frighting in part because of the chaos. The filmmakers get the sense of disorientation as bullets appear to come from everywhere. Warfare is remarkably well crafted. Most of the action unfolds in real time and the continuity is very impressive. Sound is used especially well. Although these effects have been used in other movies, namely Saving Private Ryan, the manipulation of the sound mix is very effective. The picture also uses ariel footage to visualize the larger sense of the action without having to use clunky exposition.
What Doesn’t: Mostly missing from this film about the Iraq War are the Iraqis. The SEALs hole up in a house that’s inhabited by a couple of Iraqi families. The civilians are relegated to a single room of the house and they virtually disappear from the story. This is understandable insofar as Warfare is about the experiences of its Navy SEAL characters and the action unfolds from their point of view. However, the way the Iraqi characters are shoved aside comes across a little tone deaf. The film’s scenario could be a microcosm of the war itself. During this invasion of Iraq, American soldiers take over a civilian home. The ensuing battle with insurgents puts the soldiers at risk but also the civilians who are trapped in the house with them. The filmmakers miss an opportunity to include an Iraqi perspective on the war or explore the local’s relationship to the occupiers even though these characters are literally within meters of each other.
Bottom Line: Warfare is an exceptional combat film. It’s a visceral experience that dramatizes contemporary conflict with a lot of detail and credibility. The filmmakers miss an opportunity to be more than that but the picture is in many ways an astonishing exercise in filmmaking craft.
Episode: #1044 (April 20, 2025)