After watching Alex Garland’s intense based-on-a-true-story thriller Warfare, I went to a bar where, after telling a group of people what I had watched, one woman declared incredulously, “Another Iraq war movie?” And that sums up Middle East war movies pretty well, doesn’t it? No matter how good they are, they all sort of feel the same.
Pitched to audiences as the most realistic war movie ever made, Warfare accomplishes its mission in that Garland places you squarely in with his beleaguered unit of soldiers. You feel every second of the in-real-time dramatization, which is co-directed by Ray Mendoza, one of the men depicted on screen. There’s the breathless waiting, the gunfire from nowhere, the agonized screams of injured comrades, and the inevitable rescue attempt. Garland and Mendoza hold very little back, especially when the horrid injuries come into play.
Whether it delivers a satisfactory viewing experience is another matter.
You’d have to be sociopathic to not be drawn into the suspense and excitement of Warfare, but the particular story told on screen doesn’t entirely deliver on what most audiences want from a war film: a clear message and ideally some obvious heroics. Certainly soldiers who put themselves on the line for their country are incredibly brave, and plenty of heroics are put on display in Warfare’s lean 95-minute runtime; but other than depicting real-time events, it’s unclear what Garland and Mendoza were trying to convey here. Are they trying to tell us that war is often pointless with no obvious winners? Or that what happened on this day was an incredible feat of bravery and military technique? Hard to say, because taken at face value, Warfare primarily depicts American soldiers randomly choosing to break into a family’s home to use their house as a surveillance point, only to find themselves injured and cornered in said house, effectively ruining several innocent people’s lives and their home in the process. It’s never explained what their particular mission is or what they are trying to accomplish, other than to root out insurgents.
You keep waiting for the tide to turn, for the American soldiers to get their act together and go on the offensive, but that time never really comes. At least not in the way you’d expect. Not every war movie needs to be an ode to patriotism, but you keep waiting for something more positive to happen and it never really does.
As intense and brutal as Warfare is, the movie struggles to shake the “seen it all before” sensation that often accompanies war films these days. Garland arguably overuses the “something exploded, so I’ve lost my hearing” sound technique that has been commonplace since at least Saving Private Ryan. The movie is downright gritty, and yet its in-real-time focus is at times… tedious.
Despite my criticisms, Warfare is an expertly crafted movie that evokes many of the emotions Garland and Mendoza were looking to evoke. Some of the scenes leave you breathless. Others squeamish. And when shit really goes sideways, I literally jumped in my seat. Few movies succeed to this degree, and for that, Warfare should be commended. But in the end, it can’t shake the fact that it’s just another Iraq war movie.
Review by Erik Samdahl.