When I sat down to watch A24’s “Warfare,” I thought I had a pretty good idea of what the movie would be about.
I’d seen the trailers. I’d read about Ray Mendoza’s real-life story, a decorated Navy SEAL turned military advisor and now scriptwriter and co-director of a gritty, boots-on-the-ground war film that promised authenticity without Hollywood gloss.
What I didn’t expect was that the most honest, most emotionally resonant scene in the entire film would arrive in the first minute and a half. And it didn’t involve a single shot being fired.
The movie opens on a group of SEALs huddled around a flickering laptop monitor. On the screen? The music video for Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me.” If you don’t remember the song, you’ll definitely remember the video — a rhythmic, borderline NSFW aerobic fever dream that’s been circulating military group chats since dial-up. It’s juvenile. It’s stupid. It’s perfect.
Most civilians will see that scene and laugh. Maybe cringe. “Classic bored military guys being horny and overworked,” they’ll say. And they wouldn’t be wrong.
But if you’ve served, especially if you’ve deployed, you’ll recognize something else entirely. This is one of the best film depictions of modern military life in years.
Because this moment isn’t about the video. It’s about the room. It’s about the silence between the jokes. It’s about what happens before the mission kicks off, when the gravity of what’s coming presses in from the edges and you need something, anything, to distract you from the storm gathering outside.
Up front, you’ve got the instigators. The wildcards. The ones cracking jokes, bumping shoulders, and hyping up a room full of men who’ve already seen and done too much. Every unit has them. They’re not always the most tactically proficient, but they’re the lifeblood of the platoon. On bad days, these are the guys who pull the darkness back just enough to make everyone laugh.
It’s an unspoken role. There’s no MOS for morale maintenance, no award for comic timing. But it’s one of the most critical jobs in any unit. These guys are the emotional medics, handing out humor like tourniquets.
As the camera pans back, you start to see the rest of the formation. Some of them are dancing, others are trying hard not to smile, each man swaying to his own internal rhythm. All of them performing a quiet ritual familiar to anyone who’s ever sat in a hot TOC waiting on orders. Then you catch the senior NCOs in the back. Stone-faced, arms crossed. But if you look closely, there’s a grin. It’s the look of someone who’s seen this a dozen times before. The look that says, “This is dumb, but this is why I keep coming back.”
That glance passed between the senior guy and the chaos happening in front of him speaks volumes. It says, “I remember my first deployment doing the same thing.” It says, “These idiots are mine, and they’re good at what they do.”
And in that grin, you get it. You see why this scene matters. You realize that “Warfare” has done what few war films manage to. It shows the military not just as an institution or a battlefield machine but as a living, breathing, laughing group of people holding onto their humanity however they can.
It’s not that other scenes in the film aren’t powerful. They are. The gunfights are grounded and chaotic. The pacing captures the adrenaline dump of sustained operations. But it’s this quiet, ridiculous moment, this shared ritual of idiocy, that most authentically captures what it means to serve.
Because the truth is, military life isn’t wall-to-wall action. It’s not a highlight reel of firefights and hero speeches. It’s boredom interrupted by chaos, held together by the thin threads of camaraderie and dark humor. It’s killing time before time tries to kill you.
I remember moments like this vividly. While I never served in a line unit, as a PAO, I was tasked with covering many of these units. I remember watching a route clearance platoon throw 2008’s “Tropic Thunder” on a loop in a dusty tent in southern Afghanistan, quoting every Robert Downey Jr. line. I remember walking into a briefing with a laptop screen showing “Family Guy” episodes before it was turned off to gear up for patrol. I remember laughing so hard at a private dance in the smoke pit that I even forgot, as a career POG, for five minutes, where I was.
Those were our “Call on Me” moments. Stupid. Fleeting. Vital.
And that’s why this opening scene in “Warfare” lands so hard. It’s a moment of suspended reality. A breath. A beat. A reminder that everyone in that room is still human, still reachable, still themselves, if only for a second.
I wish more people understood this aspect of military life. It’s not just the trauma, politics, or medals. It’s the music videos, inside jokes, and moments that don’t make the news — the kind of bonding that can’t be taught in basic, only learned by being there.
In just 90 seconds, “Warfare” shows us all of it. No exposition. No overbearing score. Just a group of men sharing the last easy laugh they’ll get for a while.
And then the mission starts.
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