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Tom's Guide
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
The best war movie I've seen in years is now streaming — and it's a frontrunner for my favorite film of 2025
April at the movies was all about the breakout success of 'Sinners.' It's a fantastic film, no doubt about it, but in all the adoration showered upon Ryan Coogler's high-octane vampire-horror, another (equally impressive) movie got lost in the shuffle: 'Warfare.' I caught both movies in the same weekend, and while I had a complete blast with 'Sinners,' it was 'Warfare' that really stuck with me. Here we are weeks later, and I still can't get this intense portrayal of frontline combat out of my mind. It's gone straight to the top of my favorite movies released in 2025 ranking, and I'd argue it's one of the best war movies ever made. Its box office earnings were relatively paltry at just $25M (on a budget of $20M), so if you're one of the many who missed out when it arrived on the big screen, the good news is, 'Warfare' is now available to stream (on premium video-on-demand via Amazon and Apple). Seriously, don't skip it a second time. I'm not usually one to sit through a movie's entire credits (unless it's a Marvel movie with their trademark post-credits scenes), but with 'Warfare,' I had to remain in my cinema seat just to let my heart rate return to normal. Here's why this grisly war epic is a must-watch. Co-written and co-directed by military veteran Ray Mendoza, alongside Alex Garland (who helmed last year's seriously overlooked 'Civil War'), 'Warfare' is a warts-and-all chronicling of a devastating day in the lives of a group of U.S. Navy SEALs during the Iraq War. During the Battle of Ramadi, a group of U.S. soldiers hold up in a cramped house to begin a period of surveillance. But what starts as a routine mission quickly descends into a nightmare situation as they face threats on all sides and must battle to survive against circling enemy forces. Starring Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai and Kit Conner, 'Warfar' is a harrowing insight into the experience of boots-on-the-ground infantry and, as the opening title card reveals, is entirely rooted in the memories of those who served on the frontlines. After a high-energy opening that sees the movie's cast of soldiers blowing off some steam by watching a raunchy music video in the army barracks, 'Warfare' gets right into the action as we see the members of Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One take over a civilian house under the cover of darkness. Flashforward to the next day, and from here 'Warfare' takes place entirely in real-time. It's a genius storytelling decision that adds extreme levels of tension and anxiety to the proceedings. When a squad member calls for urgent extraction and is told the Bradley vehicle is six minutes out, you, as a viewer, feel right there alongside the soldiers desperately waiting for help. Six short minutes feel like a lifetime, so I can only imagine how slowly those seconds must have ticked by for the men stranded in the house with enemies on all sides. It's this level of authenticity that 'Warfare' brings across the board. Almost every single frame is visceral and realistic. This approach is mirrored in the movie's cast of characters, who are each based on real-life soldiers, but with altered names for anonymity. None of the cast has a big action-hero moment or a dramatic monologue. Viewers aren't even treated to any extensive backstories. Instead, each squad member is portrayed as a brave soldier caught up in a fierce war machine. Clocking in at a trim 95 minutes, 'Warfare' doesn't give you a moment to catch your breath. And this is intentional. During the heat of conflict, there aren't peaceful pauses. The intensity levels are kept at a maximum from the moment things go south. It does make 'Warfare' an exhausting watch, but it also makes it supremely engaging and relentlessly thrilling. I'm not typically one to react to on-screen moments in theaters. But one scene in 'Warfare' (you'll know the one if you've seen it) had me nearly leap from my chair in surprise, shock and genuine fear. It's a powerful way of showcasing how quickly things change on the battlefield. And after my adrenaline had finished spiking, I was left in awe of the sheer cinema craftsmanship on display in 'Warfare.' Kudos to Mandoza and Garland. Unlike many recent war movies, 'Warfare' also doesn't feel the need to labor its central thesis. In fact, it arguably doesn't have one. While its grounded portrayal of combat could never be labelled pro-war propaganda, it doesn't exactly scream 'anti-war' either. Instead, the aim is to accurately recreate the sights and sounds of being in such a high-pressure situation, and in this regard, 'Warfare' has almost no peers. Of course, an authentic deception of war also means that 'Warfare' is an extremely violent movie. There are moments of intense gore that will stay with you, and the blood-curdling screams of injured soldiers will ring in your ears for weeks after watching. These men really do go through hell. So just be warned, 'Warfare' isn't a war movie about larger-than-life heroes making a triumphant last stand, it's something much better. If all my praise above isn't enough to convince you to give 'Warfare' a chance, then perhaps its extremely high review scores will tip you over the edge. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, 'Warfare' has managed an impressive 92% score from more than 200 reviews. 'Narratively cut to the bone and geared up with superb filmmaking craft, Warfare evokes the primal terror of combat with unnerving power,' reads RT's 'Critics Consensus,' and if my above write-up didn't make it clear, I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment. My fellow viewers also seem to agree, as the movie holds a 93% rating on the site's Popcornmeter. 'Warfare' is a movie-watching experience I won't soon forget. While I think it's best seen on the big screen (the truly incredible sound design warrants professional-grade speakers), this is a movie that deserves your full attention even if streamed at home. Prepare yourself for a brutal ride. Few movies have made me feel like I'm standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its cast, but 'Warfare' manages to achieve that rare feat. It's a war movie that hits with a real force that lasts long after the credits roll. Buy or rent "Warfare" on Amazon and Apple now
Atlantic
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
A War Movie That Requires Patience
The director Alex Garland's 2024 film, Civil War, was gritty, realistic, and often horrifying to watch, but it was fundamentally a flight of fantasy. One could debate just how fanciful its near-future depiction of America going to war with itself over a president who refused to leave office was, but for all that movie's intense effort to depict combat realistically, Garland was only imagining the reasons for it. The premise of his follow-up, Warfare, feels like a challenge the filmmaker issued to himself: What if you stripped away all the hooky plotting typical of military dramas, and just put an unembellished skirmish from a real war on-screen? Would it still work as cinema? The answer is yes—but Warfare is without a doubt a tougher pill to swallow than its predecessor. Garland wrote and directed the movie in collaboration with Ray Mendoza, a former U.S. Navy SEAL. Mendoza served as the military adviser on Civil War and helped Garland design some of its most ambitious action sequences. Where Civil War envisioned a dark future, Warfare conjures a specific, harrowing day from Mendoza's past. It re-creates a military operation from the 2006 Battle of Ramadi, during the Iraq War, when things went punishingly awry for Mendoza's unit. That Warfare is, in dramatically rendering a true story, visceral is hardly a surprise. What's fascinating is how so much of the film commits to the waiting that exists during battle: the taxing, dull tension of knowing that something might happen any minute. Singling out Warfare 's level of patience is not to suggest that the film is boring—it's far too stressful for that. Instead, it's to acknowledge the film's complete rejection of the typical storytelling rules for how to portray action: that it should have peaks and valleys throughout a three-act structure. Warfare is anticipation, then chaos, then a cooldown for relief. While watching, I kept considering Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down —a grander-scale reconstruction of real-life urban warfare, focused on the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, which I consider a high-water mark for technical proficiency. But that movie still has much more of a Hollywood sheen to it than Garland and Mendoza's: Black Hawk Down slowly introduces its ensemble at base camp, laying out personality types and mission specifics and showing us every level of command, from besieged grunts to steely-eyed colonels staring at monitors. Warfare has none of that exposition—it's resolutely embedded with Mendoza's specific unit, whose mission is only somewhat clear to the audience. The soldiers are surveilling a residence in Ramadi, hoping to clear ground for more troop movement the next day; eventually, they realize that the place next door is an insurgent base, and the group has to dig in as it's besieged on all sides in enemy territory. Mendoza (played by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is not positioned as more or less important than the rest of the unit, and there are no specific bits of derring-do for any of the men to help distinguish themselves. The camerawork is detached and unshowy, providing long, sometimes demanding takes and denying the viewer the respite that comes with cinematic flair. Like Black Hawk Down, Warfare features a cast of talented, good-looking young stars on the rise, including Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn, and Cosmo Jarvis. Their presences in the unit are the main helpful concessions Garland and Mendoza offer the viewer, providing familiar, distinct faces to latch on to while trying to comprehend the opaque events. Still, everyone's caked in dirt and mud and clad in camo fatigues and wraparound glasses—glitz is in short supply. There's a thrill in trying to piece together each person's role amid the things that are going wrong with the group's mission; we watch the men respond differently to the unexpected attacks they face and process the tension growing within their outpost. But giving yourself over to the anxiety is just as easy. Most of these servicemen had to learn to embrace the frustration and confusion that can come with wartime conflict—such as not knowing where or even who your opponent might be—and Warfare encourages the viewer to do the same. Neglecting to lay out the specific stakes diverges from Garland's Civil War, an ostensibly apolitical movie about a fictional political event, that depicted the tumult through the eyes of war photographers. Civil War 's characters had essentially sworn a professional oath of impartiality, a dispassionate perspective that Garland extended to the film itself. But his preference for letting the audience make up its own mind was frustrating for the many viewers who wanted Civil War to take more of a stance. Warfare is even more bluntly neutral. Mendoza and Garland don't so much as hint at why these soldiers have signed up for combat, or at their level of personal investment in the purpose of their mission; they spend no time on sermonizing about the Iraq War's morality, or ratifying any audience member's belief on the topic, as similar historical war films often do. Instead, Warfare is a memory play, an intimate portrait of one of Mendoza's personal recollections. But the bitter reality of what unfolds over 90 or so minutes during this challenging day—all of that waiting around between the gunfire—is enough to get the viewer thinking about the incremental, tedious surrealism of war. Warfare depicts a circumstance that many audiences would likely never want to experience; it's all the more crucial, then, to stare down the frightening ambiguity without narrative assuagement.
