War films serve many purposes depending on who the target audience is. They can be tools of propaganda that push a certain ideology, an entertaining feature length commercial designed to boost military recruitment numbers, a reframing of historical events through the lens of hindsight; or, as many of the best ones often do, offer a sobering meditation on what happens when mankind loses its sense of humanity.
The common linkage between all is that they are often made by civilians for civilians. Individuals who, in most cases, have not experienced firsthand the violence depicted. However, their works often play a big role in shaping our biases when it comes to global conflict and our overall expectations of what war films should be.
This makes Alex Garland’s latest film Warfare such a fascinating, and at times challenging, work. Co-directed by Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL, Garland’s follow up to 2024’s Civil War, a fictional tale that explored America’s divided political climate through the eyes of wartime journalism, is a film made specifically for individuals who experienced the horrors depicted onscreen.
Originally crafting the idea as a 30-minute short, Mendoza’s goal was to help his fellow SEAL team member Elliott Miller remember what a happened on that nightmarish day in Iraq when an IED left him paralyzed. Pulling together the memories of the men who lived to tell the tale, Warfare offers a snapshot of a particular moment in time. One that presents the terror of war, and the disposable nature of the innocents caught in the middle, without any real deep commentary.
Warfare is not concerned with the politics of the Iraq War or the officials who put the men in that predicament in the first place. In fact, the film cares little about anything, including the central characters lives, prior to what occurred on November 19, 2006. All the audience knows about Mendoza (played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), a communicator, and Miller (Cosmo Jarvis), a lead sniper, when the film commences is that they are part of the I-26 infantry. The first time the viewers sees the troop, which consists of SEALs played by Will Poulter, Charles Melton and Joseph Quinn to name a few, they are hoovered around a screen watching DJ Eric Prydz‘s 80’s inspired music video “Call on Me.”
The pumping beats and raucous revelry is the only glimpse of their brotherly bonds that is shown outside of the conflict. When the audience next sees the troop, split into two teams, they are quietly moving through the nighttime streets of Fallujah in search of the right home to invade. Deep in insurgent territory, they randomly decided to take over a residence, consisting of two families divided among two separate apartments within the structure, that they feel will give them the best surveillance point.
Unfortunately, their covert mission is anything but, as it does not take long for the home to get probing looks from passersby across the street. When the insurgents gather their fighters and commence a surprise attack on Mendoza’s team, the SEALs find themselves in a deadly battle for survival that is getting worse by the minute.
Putting the viewer in the boots of the SEALs, Warfare deliberately takes its time building to the action. Garland and Mendoza truly want viewers to experience every aspect of the mission, from the copious amount of waiting that comes with surveillance to the disorienting nature of combat. When the battle commences it is both shocking and downright horrifying. As smoke from an IED blast fills the streets, and wails of pain from injured SEALs serve as the films only soundtrack, the panic and confusion move to the forefront.
It is in this catastrophic and intense space that Warfare reminds viewers of the human cost that is paid and the lives disrupted. As the camera lingers on the bodies decapitated by the bomb, which harkens back to the way Garland’s lens focused on the dead Black bodies in Civil War, the film further emphasizes who are considered disposable in times of chaos. For the SEALs trapped in this battle, one where their superiors won’t send aid unless proper protocols are followed, their only concern is each other.
This places the film in a rather complicated predicament. On one hand, Warfare captures how easily war can forever change so many lives in such a short span of time. On the other, the film is so focused on this specific point in time that it leaves no room for any sort of meditation on who the real victims are in war.
Garland and Mendoza may hint at the ways even soldiers, such as the overzealous SEAL who tries to convince a severely wounded Sam (Quinn) to shake off what he calls “a paper cut,” can be blind to the realities of the conflict they are engaged in. However, the lack of any real character development, one hears more technical SEAL jargon than individuals’ names, strips the film of some of its emotion. At times the film assumes that simply witnessing carnage is all that is needed to evoke sympathy for the victims. However, as the audience already knows, history and human nature has shown that this is far from the case.
A jarring film on several fronts, the real star of Warfare is its sensational sound design. The viewer truly feels like they have been thrown into the fray, but not in a Call of Duty entertaining kind of way. The bullets whizzing in the air, the screams of pain, and the distortion crackling from the radio comms make the film feel more like a horror movie than a pro-SEAL recruitment tool. This is not to say that the film does not view these men as heroes, it does, but audiences don’t leave the theatre with the same exhilarating enthusiasm as they did with Hollywood Blockbusters such as Black Hawk Down.
In sitting in the horror of conflict, Warfare offers a cold and grisly look at the disposable nature of war. While a fascinating and chilling film, one cannot help but wish Garland and Mendoza provided a little more insight into the men who they are celebrating, and the individuals whose lives they disrupted and discarded.
