Alex Garland directed the brilliant Civil War last year, and he is back with Ray Mendoza, who acted as the military adviser on that film, with their co-writing effort, Warfare. It follows, in real-time, a platoon of US Navy SEALs on a mission through insurgent territory in Iraq in 2006. The story was pieced together from the memories of the survivors, including Mendoza.
After a very brief preamble, the audience is plunged into the action as the platoon take over a residential home, and are soon pinned down by the enemy. From then on the breathless action does not let up. I don’t think I have seen a film portray the disorientating chaos of conflict as well as this, except maybe Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down.
As well trained as the soldiers might be, they are clearly not prepared for the confusion of the moment. As one of them says, when talking to another group who are trying to rendezvous with them, “Just look for the blood and smoke”. As with Civil War, we are not given lots of unnecessary exposition and the intention is clearly to show what happened rather than why it did.
I also appreciated the depiction of the men as believable human beings rather than archetypes – the hero, the coward, the rookie, the joker etc. – that so often appear in war movies. The cast are uniformly believable from established names like Will Poulter, Charles Melton and Cosmo Jarvis to the relative unknown D’Pharoah Woon-a-Tai who plays Ray.
With an incredible sound design by a 14 man team, this is a visceral experience that should be seen on a big screen.
Rating: 9 out of 10