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Soldiers entering a combat zone in Warfare
Photo: A24

Warfare
Directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza
Rated R
Raided 11 April 2025
#Warfare

While Warfare captures the heat of war, it’s a cold moviegoing experience.

The Horror

The ambitions are solid: to reenact with as much detail and accuracy as possible a 2006 real-life combat incident in Ramadi, Iraq.

But even a reenactment of a grisly military situation needs certain elements to succeed as a theatrical experience. As it stands, Warfare feels incomplete as a movie.

An opening title card says the story is based only on the memories of the Navy SEALs who were there. Then — jarringly — it shifts to a jazzercise video set to Steve Winwood’s Valerie. Incredibly fit women exercise to the beat in incredibly tight tights. It’s a strange throwback and a wild change in tone. Then it’s revealed it’s members of a platoon who are watching the video, getting energized for their mission.

Aside from some good-humor dance moves as the soldiers move under the cover of night and a backwashed bottle of water passed from one soldier to another, that is pretty much the extent of the pre-incident bonding between the soldiers and it’s also representative of the movie’s biggest problem: as valiant as the soldiers were, this isn’t the best way to showcase and honor their sacrifice.

Going in cold, there isn’t enough context and background information for civilian audiences to understand the circumstances and the situation. Perhaps that lack of clarity is in part representative of the platoon’s own lack of transparency, but there’s still plenty more that could’ve been done to better embed the audience with the soldiers.

Frog 6 Romeo

The platoon’s engaged in a stakeout, surveilling a dusty street and the comings and goings of various people, including a guy in a white T-shirt and black running pants. That much is easy enough to pick up, but the broader context isn’t as obvious. This is dangerous territory controlled by Al Qaeda. The whole point of the surveillance is to provide cover for and the safe passage of ground forces moving through the area.

This surveillance activity goes on for a full 30 minutes; the entire movie’s only 95 minutes. In movie-speak, this would be considered a slow-burn thriller. The problem is, during these 30 minutes is when the tension would normally be ratcheting up as part of a theatrical event. In this case, it doesn’t, but it is certainly expected "something" is going to happen. It’s not particularly clear what the significance is of the platoon’s circumstance. If that’s part of the reenactment — if the soldiers are truly equally in the dark — then it all needs to be handled differently for audiences unfamiliar with the theatre of war.

The soldiers do have a better sense of their time and their place, though. Alarming activity is spotted, but a critical opportunity to strike down an opponent is missed. Then it’s clear jihad has been called on the Americans known to be holed up in this house, a house where the platoon has effectively — out of necessity — also taken the native family hostage.

Show of Force

In narrative terms, Warfare doesn’t equate to a full story. The production values are high quality, however. In IMAX, the imagery is sharp, but it’s the sound that truly creates a sense of immersion, which is ultimately the goal of the movie. Immerse audiences in the madness of combat.

Breaking the calm and limited tension of the surveillance mission, a grenade is lobbed into a room where a sniper is keeping an eye peeled for an Al Qaeda mark. There’s an explosion. Then gunfire ricochets throughout the sound system. The experience ramps up further when the team calls for a "show of force," which brings a jet fighter streaking low above the barren, empty street, leaving a rush of dirt and debris and a sonic boom. There’s also the chaos of the radio communications and screams — lots of agonizing screams — as the soldiers endure gruesome injuries.

In the thick of this action, the seats and floor rumble.

That is effective filmmaking executed by co-directors Alex Garland (Ex Machina) and Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL. The two collaborated on the questionable Civil War, a fictional look at a future-state United States of America, which became the launching pad for this fact-based project.

Paper Cuts

The combat quickly gets gruesome and there’s no denying that aspect makes an impression. One soldier is dismembered at the waist; another suffers flesh-searing burns on his legs. The efforts to evacuate one soldier only lead to further injuries.

Clearly, a goal set by Garland and Mendoza is to expose the human toll all of this takes. Not just on the platoon, but on the locals. One of the aggravating effects, though, is a reveal of the very basic inefficiencies of ground combat. And that’s where Warfare starts to show its limitations.

There is a quick cut to a photo of a boy standing outside — apparently — the Ramadi house that is the movie’s setting. Then it’s another quick cut to the Warfare title card. It’s as if the movie wants to say something about the civilian toll, but it doesn’t come near hitting that target, even as a family is effectively held hostage by the American soldiers. For that matter, what about the human toll and strategic questions of having Al Qaeda hunkered down across the street from your urban house?

As for the soldiers, there’s an effective sequence pre-end credits showing the cast member’s photo set next to the real-life soldier. But most of the soldiers have their faces blurred out. There’s also some behind-the-scenes footage of the actors being trained on various ground maneuvers by real SEALs. They also meet the wounded soldier to whom the movie is dedicated, Elliott.

Maybe an even better movie resides in the form of a documentary about the making of the movie. Mix that with the dramatized footage in Warfare and the punches might finally hit — and hit much harder.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.