Boot camp, matching tattoos and mutual head-shaving: Kit Connor, Will Poulter and Michael Gandolfini on making Warfare

The Guardian

18-04-2025

Five actors and one director are seated around a table in a London hotel room, when there is a knock at the door. The room service attendant enters, bearing a tray of dainty glasses filled with a custard-coloured tipple. It's not even noon, but cut these people some slack: they've been through something traumatic.
Ray Mendoza, the 45-year-old Iraq war veteran turned film-maker, has just co-directed Warfare, which restages in distressing, claustrophobic visuals and concussive sound the terrifying ordeal he underwent in November 2006 as part of a group of US Navy Seals who were trapped, along with two Iraqi scouts and two marines, under fire from al-Qaida forces in a crumbling apartment building in Ramadi, 70 miles (110km) west of Baghdad. Mendoza and his fellow soldiers had to care for their wounded comrades, after an improvised explosive device blew up the armoured vehicle that was trying to facilitate their escape, all the while holding off their attackers and hanging tight for a second batch of rescuers.
Now, he and Alex Garland, who became close when Mendoza was an adviser on Garland's explosive thriller Civil War, have recreated that experience. Just as Stanley Kubrick brought the Vietnam war to an east London gasworks for Full Metal Jacket, Garland and Mendoza's crew built an exact replica of the Ramadi street on an airfield in Buckinghamshire for Warfare.
The actors still look mildly shell-shocked from the production, which was preceded by a three-and-a-half-week bootcamp, led by Mendoza. Three of them are Britons, kitted out today in sober black or grey suits. At 35, Cosmo Jarvis, the grizzled hero of last year's Shōgun, is the elder statesman of the cast members present; opposite him is Will Poulter, 32, who has form with harrowing movie experiences, having starred in The Revenant, Detroit and Midsommar; and next to Poulter is Kit Connor, the Heartstopper heart-throb, 21, and with a face as soft as bubble bath. Michael Gandolfini, 25, who played the young Tony Soprano, the character immortalised by his late father, James, in The Many Saints of Newark, is dressed, like Mendoza, in a mushroom-coloured sweatshirt. The most dapper of the group, in an emerald green shirt and chocolate-brown corduroy suit, is 23-year-old D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, the Canadian star of Taika Waititi's Reservation Dogs. He says little today, scowling handsomely as though smiling is taxed.
And the beverage? Something bracing that harks back to those wild nights letting off steam after long days at boot camp? Not quite. 'Ginger shots,' says Connor cheerfully. They all down theirs except Mendoza, whose drink sits untouched in front of him for the next hour.
It was his idea to make the film. But why tell this story among all the others he must have at his disposal? 'It's true there are others that resonate,' he says. 'The battle of Falluja. Haditha Dam. I could go on. The difference with this one, though, is Elliott Miller.' Miller, played in the film by Jarvis, is a close friend of Mendoza, and was severely wounded that day in Ramadi.
'He still does not remember what happened. When he first woke up in hospital, he wanted us to tell him everything. The more we explained, the more questions he had. It seemed we could never solve the issue of him lacking that core memory.' As Mendoza began working in the film industry – early jobs included adviser roles on Lone Survivor and Jurassic World – he realised that he had the opportunity to show Miller what they had all gone through together, rather than simply telling him. 'I felt I was ready. I felt it was time.' What was Miller's response when he revealed his plan? 'This is a direct quote: 'Fuck yeah!''
The film was pieced together from the memories of those who were there. 'There was a simple rule that if it happened, it went in, and if it didn't, it was out,' says Gandolfini. 'Our function was more to recreate. What was most fundamental was, um, the pursuit of truth.' Chuckles ripple around the table. It quickly becomes clear that Gandolfini has uttered today's booby-trapped phrase: say 'the pursuit of truth' and you earn the gentle mockery of your cast-mates. 'There should be some sort of prize,' smiles Poulter. 'Or punishment.'
It's understandable that they might need such distractions to keep themselves interested. There is laughter again, for instance, when Woon-A-Tai's answer to one of my questions begins: 'I don't know if anyone said this already, because I kinda zoned out a little bit back there, but ….' After all, they have been asked umpteen times about what boot camp was like, and how they shaved one another's heads as a bonding exercise, and how they all got matching tattoos once filming was over. The words 'Call on me', taken from the Eric Prydz banger heard in Warfare's opening scene, were intended to convey in ink the sense of brotherhood instilled in them by the making of the movie.
Gandolfini describes the atmosphere on set: 'There was a roaming camera so it was filmed much more as a play. Everyone was 100% on, all the time.' Poulter jumps in: 'Typically in film-making, you're finding what's most entertaining. The MO here was completely different. We were making sure we were aligned with the memories of the gentlemen who experienced this.' Didn't that inhibit their choices as actors? 'It might in the traditional context,' Poulter says. 'But it empowered us in what we were trying to do. Which was to tell the truth.'
Jarvis adds his thoughts: 'Even though it might seem you're existing within the confines of a memory, the memories themselves aren't actually confining. They serve instead as a very clear outline.' 'There was such an attention to detail,' says Connor in confirmation. 'We did two read-throughs that were basically four hours long because we went through everything with a fine-toothed comb.' Woon-A-Tai had it slightly easier, perhaps, since he was playing Mendoza. 'Any small detail, I had Ray there to check,' he says. 'After every take, I asked if I did it right. I studied him and tried to steer away from adding my own two cents.' Mendoza gives an approving nod.
Once the attack commences in Warfare, the film becomes a protracted sensory experience akin to watching the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan stretched out to 90 minutes. There is close to no information about who the characters are, and audiences will learn nothing about the war itself, or the enemy, who are described at one point by Miller as 'getting their jihad on'.
As gripping and technically accomplished as the film is, there must be anxiety among the A24 marketing team about how to get Warfare seen. Hence the preponderance of red-carpet hijinks and social-media malarkey that is being used to promote it, and the plentiful references online to the film's cast of 'internet boyfriends'. One advertorial in a men's style magazine promotes Warfare via the array of expensive watches worn by the actors off-screen: a watch with its 'slinky stainless steel case' is compared to 'a Navy Seal on a surveillance mission'. There is wordplay around 'ammo' and 'firepower'. The article stops short of describing the timepieces as 'weapons of mass attraction' – but only just.
Beyond this hoopla seems to lurk the question: will anyone want to see Warfare more than once? Will anyone want to see it at all? 'I've seen it six times,' says Woon-A-Tai.
But there's no way around it: Warfare is a necessarily gruelling experience. I'm interested, then, to know what sort of language the cast members have been using to encourage their friends to see the film. How do they sell a movie that is so intense?
'I've been trying not to say 'intense',' says Poulter. 'Just because everybody says that.' Oops. My bad.
'Someone called it an action movie,' says Jarvis, shaking his head in dismay. 'And yeah, people say 'intense'. I understand why. But I just try to reiterate the clarity of the original objective. Sometimes, films don't even seem to have a direction. Alex and Ray had rules, artistic rules, which informed the process.' He sighs. 'I just want people to witness the film without having to pick words to describe it to them.'
But describe it we must. Or else how will audiences know whether to buy a ticket? I put the same question to Woon-A-Tai: how is he selling it? 'I would tell people it's probably one of the most immersive war films that I've ever seen in my life,' he says gravely. 'And honestly, I think that is a pretty good selling-point.' His comrades concur.
Gandolfini leans in. 'This movie feels highly necessary,' he says. 'These are human beings. This is something that happened, and that continues to happen. It's interesting when people say, 'It's such an uncomfortable experience, why didn't we get a break?' It's like, what? This is what happened to these guys: they didn't get a break. This is what happens.''
'And it is happening right now,' says Poulter, furrowing his brow. 'Modern warfare is not obsolete.' Silence weighs heavily in the room. Somebody's chair creaks. Connor stares at his empty shot glass.
Then Mendoza sits back from the table. 'These are my closing remarks,' he announces, as if wrapping up a meeting. 'I'm not worried about how the film is received so much as seeing it as a moment in time for me and my friends that's gone. Maybe this will only be special to them. But it's going to resonate with veterans. And there is love between them. It is about love.'
He lets that thought hang in the air. 'If you can't watch this movie, if you're trying to put it in a box of, like, 'There are all these wars going on, and what's the context, and what's your opinion on war?'… Well then, I feel bad for you because you're missing something. It's about sacrifices that can only be made through a deep understanding of love. These guys were willing to put their lives on the line and go through hell to save a group of other guys. Maybe you wanna go see what that kind of sacrifice is like, and ask yourself, 'What have I done that's like that?' If you can't see that in this movie then you're doing it through a different lens and … I dunno. I wish you would see it this way. I feel sorry if you can't experience it that way and if you have to put it in some kind of political box.'
Mendoza turns his attention to the actors, two or three of whom are now staring solemnly into their laps. 'I'll keep saying it: I'm proud of all you guys,' he tells them, garnering grunts of reciprocation. 'Go on and do great things.'
Warfare is in cinemas now.