I knew from the first few seconds that “Warfare” was going to be a different kind of war movie.
Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland’s film about a real battle in the Iraq War opens with a sexy, 80s workout-style music video for a dance song, which our starring military unit is watching together (probably since actual pornography isn’t allowed in a combat zone). The March 27 premiere in Los Angeles was loaded with veterans who were along for the joke, and the movie treated us to these types of authentic shenanigans throughout the first act before throwing us into combat.
I won’t lie, I cried a little at the funny parts. Why? Because my own service in the Army, including a deployment to Afghanistan, taught me that being in the military is usually more absurd than heroic. “Warfare” sets out to demonstrate this right away, and despite a few ‘Hollywood’ moments, hits something visceral and personal.
The film, which is set to arrive in theaters on April 11, 2025, is based on a real operation that Mendoza, who wrote the script, participated in while serving as a Navy SEAL in Iraq in 2006. The film follows Mendoza’s SEAL platoon during a surveillance mission in the city of Ramadi when they’re overrun by local jihadists.
The movie doesn’t waste any time on exposition about ranks, branches of service, or specific jobs. The story takes place within a single day in a single place, and doesn’t venture outside of that, which really works. We learn everything we need to know, and nothing more, through the events unfolding naturally, an excellent decision given the film’s lean and mean 95-minute runtime.
Instead, we get to witness some of the realities of war early on. For starters, the film depicts the harsh fact that American troops too often mistreated our local partners. In one scene, a pair of Iraqis attached to the unit are forced to exit the building under fire first before one of them is ripped in half by an IED. The other characters don’t seem to feel even slightly bad about it, but the movie doesn’t try to dismiss it as justified, either. The choice to realistically depict it on screen simply provides us the opportunity to see how wrong it is.
We also get a few brief but vital moments with the Iraqi family whose house the movie takes place in. And the film’s closing shot implies that the insurgents may have ultimately won, but the movie stops short of making a clear statement on any of it, shunning evocative close-ups for a documentary or journalistic point of view with wider, static shots.
I think the team made a solid choice in this approach, but I suspect that some audience members might feel as though “Warfare,” while raising these questions, limits our ability to empathize with anyone beyond the American troops on screen. This is most noticeable, for example, as they indifferently step over the dismembered body of the team’s Iraqi partner whose life they placed below their own by sending him out first.
War is ugly, but “Warfare” does a beautiful job depicting it. The acting is incredible across the ensemble cast, which stars D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as a young version of writer-director Mendoza, and Will Poulter as the commander on the mission. The troops’ military tactics look realistic and compelling throughout. But Cosmo Jarvis steals the show as Elliot, a sniper who is eventually injured and evacuated under fire. His every movement and expression, from stretching after a long period looking through his sniper scope, to awkwardly staring down a teammate for no real reason, evokes the military experience for me, making the film fully real when he’s on the screen.
“Warfare” also benefits from excellent cinematography and editing, showing clear, steady action. Many shots are more artistic than you’d expect to see in an action film. And unlike many war movies, “Warfare” masterfully depicts the sometimes lumbering pace at which troops move under their heavy combat loads, rather than adding an artificial sense of speed with quick cuts, shaky footage, or deceptive angles.
The immersive sound design highlights both the quiet moments of war and the painfully loud ones. It also conveys a few subjective character experiences, like hearing loss after an explosion and the chaos of radio chatter during combat. The choice not to include a musical score was absolutely perfect, and the dialogue is crystal clear through all the noise.
Overall, the production quality allowed me to sit back and experience the events as though I were there. And just as I cried during the funny parts, I found myself laughing out loud more than once during the anxiety-inducing combat of the film.
The gallows humor feels completely intentional, like when a consistently inept officer, played brilliantly by Michael Gandolfini, stabs his own hand trying to inject morphine into Elliot, or gets stuck in the door during the team’s climactic final escape. “Warfare” is based on actual events as remembered by the men who were there, but I felt like Mendoza and Garland chose to depict these particular moments in a darkly funny tone just for me, and I bet a lot of other veterans of the Global War on Terror Era will, too.
The movie does give into the cool-guy combat tropes a little in the third act, as a second SEAL team, who arrives to support an evacuation, fearlessly runs and shoots their way through the town, but it’s at least still entertaining to watch. And the film never gives up on the humanity and fallibility of the troops, or the brutality of that war, as the troops continually and painfully stumble over the mutilated bodies of those they’ve come to rescue.
After the battle ends and the narrative of the film is over, the movie goes quickly into showing pictures of those depicted on screen, juxtaposing the actual service members alongside their on-screen counterparts. However, “Warfare” had already done them justice, and the extra effort seemed like a well-intended but failed attempt to tidy up the ambiguity that “Warfare,” like actual war, leaves us with. This sort of exposition somewhat undercuts the tone of the movie itself, and was an unfortunate epilogue. Half the faces are blurred out anyway, making it confusing at best.
That being said, “Warfare” is still an epic ride, and I hope audiences see it and enjoy it. There’s still a lot of work to be done to take these kinds of stories beyond the hero worship endemic to the post-9/11 world. Audiences are ready to experience the deeper and more complicated parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, and “Warfare” is a powerful start. Perhaps its critical and box office reception will determine whether Hollywood storytellers get to keep moving in that direction.
‘Warfare’ is in theaters April 11.