Alex Garland's ‘Warfare' Generated Tons of Controversy. Here's Why You Should See It Anyway

Yahoo

13 hours ago

Warfare, the new film from co-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, appears to be one of the most realistic and grueling combat films ever made. It's one of this year's best films, but it's doubtful you'll be able to stomach it more than once (if that). It would be trite for anyone who's not seen combat to say that Warfare is a realistic depiction of battle, but it vibrates with the nauseating feeling of authenticity. The film has generated a fair amount of controversy, with some identifying it as jingoist propaganda, but that could not be further from the truth.
Garland is the prolific screenwriter behind 28 Days Later (and the upcoming 28 Years Later), and the director of Ex Machina (2015) and Annihilation (2018). His previous film, 2024's Civil War, was one of the best American films of last year. It was a gritty but simultaneously poetic piece of speculative fiction concerning a Stateside civil war, the roots and details of which remained delightfully unexplained. The point was not what brought us there, but how we extricate ourselves from it. Civil War diluted its queasier elements with a thrumming soundtrack, a warm central relationship between characters played by Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny, and a satisfying-if-brutal climax in which insurgents storm the White House and, well, you can guess the rest.
Warfare contains none of those audience concessions. It's grisly, unpleasant, genuinely horrifying filmmaking which is emphatically not a piece of propaganda nor entertainment but rather a gigantic question mark over the idea of combat itself. It's a spectacular piece of cinema, one of the most visceral and immersive movies you're likely to see; but it's extremely unpleasant to behold.Garland wrote and directed the picture with Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL, on whose experience the film is based. Mendoza worked as a military adviser on Civil War, and his influence is felt in that film's authentic milieu (particularly that final Oval Office skirmish). Warfare, which takes place mostly in real-time, chronicles a mission undertaken by Mendoza's platoon in November 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, which went terribly wrong.
We watch as the group — led by Will Poulter's Eric and including D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza and Cosmo Jarvis as his best friend, Elliot — takes over a residential home, knocking down a wall that separates their apartment from another family and confining the civilians to the basement. Elliot and another sniper, Frank (Taylor John Smith), take positions monitoring a building across the street. Slowly, activity starts building around the apartment block. Parents begin clearing their children off the street. An unseen assailant tosses a grenade into the apartment, and chaos ensues. From that point on, the film is a dire combat diary about the platoon's struggle to simply stay alive.
Mendoza and Garland undertook what the former described as a 'detective-like approach' to unravel the different fragments of recollection from those involved. 'This film uses only their memories,' an opening title card tells us of Mendoza and his comrades. A statement at the very end of the film's credits goes further: 'This film is based on interviews with people involved, and a handful of photographs,' it explains. 'The film attempts to reconstruct the incident with as much accuracy as memory allows.'
Warfare has provoked ire and controversy in certain circles over what some deem to be a thread of jingoistic patriotism running through the film. One wonders if those people have seen Garland and Mendoza's movie or simply judged the trailer. Much like Civil War, Warfare de-contextualizes the conflict and plainly presents, in Garland's words, 'an incident of warfare.' Just one, like many before and after. There is no politicizing, no monologues explaining the plot, or even errant dialogue hinting at the cause the main characters are striving towards. Warfare presents its characters and situations at face value, allowing the audience to put their own interpretation on events. There is no traditional film score, no musical stings, no reprieve from the sensory assault. As such, it's gratingly, brilliantly claustrophobic.
As it focuses on a group of American military personnel and largely keeps off-screen the faceless 'jihadists' who are attacking them, one could draw inferences that the film is pro-American military, but to actually believe that would be to willfully ignore the message of the film, not to mention the craft behind it. It's simply a memory piece of those involved, and one senses that Garland and Mendoza would make an equally humane film about the other side of the conflict were they provided with that perspective. A brief coda, focusing on the Iraqi family in whose home most of the action unfolds, expresses unequivocally with whom the directors sympathize. Likewise, the film's final shot is a gut-punch of desperation. What was it all for?There is no heroic derring-do on display here, no moments where any of the ensemble have an opportunity to distinguish themselves with a bit of cool action. Warfare removes the inherent cinema behind violence, presenting it as it is: confusing, scary, and unceasing. There's not a single frame of this movie which is framed in an exciting or titillating manner. It seems impossible, and frankly a bit nauseating, to imagine that anyone would watch Warfare and be entertained by it, or think that there is anything glamorous about what's depicted. It's the harshest possible rebuke to the sexy, Miller-time combat depicted in Hollywood productions like Top Gun: Maverick, which functioned nominally as a hyped-up recruitment video. Warfare demands to be shown as the second half of a double bill with that film, so opposed and convincing is its stance.
Warfare is certainly one of the most emphatically anti-war films ever made. It's a properly grueling experience which is commendable for the ringer through which it puts its audience, and for the sheer skill behind its filmmaking. It's highly unlikely you'll want to watch Warfare more than once (whether you want to stomach it at all is worth interrogating), but it's a film of remarkable integrity which unfailingly maintains the strength of its conviction. It offers viewers, from the comfort of their couches, a glimpse of a world they would be lucky never to see.