With the heart-pumping, relentlessly brutal, Kirsten Dunst-led Civil War, Alex Garland—the creator of steely dystopias Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men—constructed a war epic on a vast scale: a death-defying journey down the conflict-ravaged East Coast in a terrifying near future, on the tail of a crew of scrappy journalists eager to get a final quote from a power-hungry president who is about to be deposed. Now, the director’s follow-up, a year after, marks a notable change of pace: titled Warfare, it is as acutely intimate as its predecessor is sweeping, and firmly grounded in reality where the other relied on intricate world building. But the gut punch it provides is every bit as powerful.
Integral to its success is Ray Mendoza, an Iraq War veteran and former US Navy SEAL who served as Garland’s military supervisor on Civil War, and is, this time around, his co-director and -writer. Warfare is a visceral, immersive, real-time recreation of one of his most traumatic memories; it opens in 2006, in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, as a team of soldiers prepare for battle.
Before we’re plunged into the blood-soaked chaos, there’s a rare moment of euphoria: the young, bright-eyed, ragtag bunch is seen dancing to a pounding club track after hours. But this much-needed release doesn’t last long. Soon, they’re back on the moonlit streets in search of a house, a new base from which to continue their operation. They find one, upend the life of the family within it, and then hunker down, closely observing their surroundings. As we watch local men flit in and out of the viewfinders of their sniper rifles, exchanging significant glances and whispered words, the tension—and our sense of paranoia—builds.
This first half an hour is a total masterclass, one which, with remarkably few theatrics—no dramatic music, sparse dialogue—slowly makes your hair stand on end, and compels you to question everything you see. Then the other shoe drops, and the rest of Warfare is a head-first dive into the abyss as bullets rain, blood flows, and any respite feels increasingly out of reach.
Through it all, the cast is masterful—a supremely talented ensemble featuring what feels like every internet boyfriend on the face of the earth: Will Poulter, Heartstopper’s Kit Connor, Gladiator II’s Joseph Quinn, Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis, Black Doves’s Finn Bennett, Where the Crawdads Sing’s Taylor John Smith, The Many Saints of Newark’s Michael Gandolfini, the To All the Boys franchise’s Noah Centineo, Teen Wolf’s Henry Zaga, Industry’s Adain Bradley, May December’s Charles Melton, and Reservation Dogs breakout D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, in the part of Mendoza himself.
It’s a combination that should feel distracting or almost painfully zeitgeisty, but it doesn’t: Entirely committed and understated, they all slip effortlessly into their parts and come together to form a very credible unit. Commendably, the focus is on their collective dynamic over scene-stealing individualism, though Woon-A-Tai is a clear standout, captivating as a taciturn recruit who is pushed to limits he never fathomed.
The cinematography and sound design, too, are just stunning—once bombs begin to drop, everything is lost in a thick, velvety haze, and the booming eventually grows so loud that you feel as if you yourself have been blown up along with your new comrades onscreen. It’s breathtaking, horrifying stuff, an assault of gore and devastation that never shies away from the barbaric realties of modern warfare.
Adding to that intense, unbearable realism is a script rooted in the minutiae of combat, with soldiers reeling off locations and codes while only their faces reflect the terror of what they’re actually experiencing. (It also includes a handful of moments that are bleakly funny—slapstick mishaps that feel as unfortunate as they do painfully relatable.)
Yet after a confident opening and one genuinely jaw-dropping set piece, where Warfare stumbles slightly, is in its less assured back half. Once the crew we’ve grown close to is partly replaced by another, it becomes marginally less engrossing.
Questions will, and admittedly should, also be asked about Warfare’s politics. As a painstaking reconstruction of a memory, one that operates as something akin to a single-location stage play, it is perhaps understandably (but also curiously) focused and apolitical, simply presenting the situation as it happened and leaving us to make up our minds about it. But can a depiction of the Iraq War, of all things, ever truly be apolitical? And even if it can, should it be?
Garland and Mendoza take pains to layer in the experiences of the two Iraqi translators who accompany the troops, as well as that of the family whose house they invade, but they remain largely peripheral, and occasionally even disposable. You leave with the feeling that there’s another story to be told here, one that centers the Iraqi perspective—and is likely even more fascinating.
But even with all this in mind, Warfare remains one hell of a ride—and one I’ve been mulling over in my mind ever since my first viewing. Its ending, in which the surviving soldiers finally depart, local gunmen flood the streets, and the Iraqi family are left to pick up the pieces, deeply traumatized, can either be taken at face value, or read as an allegory for this conflict more widely—one in which American troops invaded, turned a region on its head, and then eventually withdrew amid a rise in extremism, leaving local communities to deal with the fallout. There’s another moment in the film when the American troops, pleading for help on their radios, find themselves temporarily abandoned by the system meant to protect them, and realize they must fend for themselves. Could this be an instance of veiled political commentary? It’s unclear—perhaps it’s just how things played out in real life—but the ambiguity makes Warfare compelling.
What I do know, however, is that in this muted, post-Oscars landscape of new releases, following a string of high-profile disappointments (The Monkey, Mickey 17, Opus), this is the first actually great film of this new season—and one that has, with its sheer explosiveness, secured its spot in the canon of heart-stopping war movies. Watch it on the biggest screen (and with the most immersive sound system) you can find.
Warfare is in theateres from April 11.
