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Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Catharsis in Re-Creating One of the Worst Days of Your Life
This article includes spoilers for the film Warfare. Since 2012, Ray Mendoza has been building a hefty Hollywood résumé: performing stunts, choreographing gunfights, and teaching movie stars how to act like soldiers in films such as Act of Valor and Lone Survivor. He also helped design the battle sequences in last year's Civil War, the writer-director Alex Garland's speculative thriller imagining America as an endless combat zone. These projects have been a particularly good fit for him. Mendoza is a former Navy SEAL; two decades ago, during the Iraq War, he was part of a platoon scouting a residential area in Ramadi. One day in November 2006, al-Qaeda forces injured two of his teammates and then exploded an IED while American soldiers attempted to extract the pair. Trapped in a single building, the group waited for a new convoy of rescue tanks that wouldn't arrive for hours. The events are depicted in the film Warfare, now streaming, which Mendoza wrote and directed with Garland. Over the course of a brisk 95 minutes, the viewer watches as the platoon goes from carrying out a typical surveillance exercise to trying to evacuate without harming anyone else. (The skirmish was part of the Battle of Ramadi, an eight-month conflict that left more than 1,000 soldiers, insurgents, and civilians dead.) Yet, for all the combat Warfare depicts, the film doesn't resemble most military movies. Members of the platoon—played by an ensemble of rising stars, including Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Reservation Dogs' D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza—exchange little dialogue, rarely trading first names let alone backstories. Up until the al-Qaeda forces discover their hideout, the action is contained to mundane activities: confirming operations, tracking other platoons' movements. There are no extraneous set pieces to keep the audience's attention, no rousing speeches from world leaders, no context provided about why Ramadi was important to American interests during the Iraq War. The result is a war movie that's mostly a war movie in name only—which is how Mendoza told me he wanted it. In real life, one of the wounded SEALs, Elliott Miller (played by Shōgun's Cosmo Jarvis), never recovered his memory after getting caught in the IED blast. Miller's inability to recall the day's events inspired Mendoza to reconstruct them meticulously. When Mendoza and Garland began developing Warfare, they interviewed as many members of the platoon as they could, corroborating details until they had a version of the experience that they hoped would feel authentic to the people involved. The film makes clear that, to the co-directors, war is a hell made of never-ending protocols, of compartmentalized emotions, of intense bonds built among people taught to move as one indistinguishable unit. As Mendoza put it to me, 'I just wanted to do an accurate representation of what combat was.' And, he added, 'I wanted to re-create it because my friend doesn't remember it.' After the IED explodes, Elliott isn't the only one horrifically injured. Sam (played by Joseph Quinn) wakes to find himself on fire, his legs mangled. For what feels like hours on end to the viewer, Sam howls in pain as his teammates drag him to safety. Warfare is largely devoid of the hallmarks of a Hollywood film—there's no musical score, for instance—and Sam's cries highlight the film's naturalism; they are screams that the movie suggests were as nerve-shredding for Sam's teammates to hear in real life as they are for audience members to hear at home. But Joe Hildebrand, the SEAL on whom Sam is based, told me that he was unaffected by Quinn's performance when he watched it during a visit to the set. 'Everybody kept asking me, 'You okay?'' he recalled. 'I said, 'I'm fine.' I know the outcome. I know how it's gonna turn out.' Hildebrand found the set itself, which was built on a former World War II airfield turned film studio outside London, more visceral. Warfare's crew had meticulously reconstructed the house in which the SEALs hid; looking around, Hildebrand explained, brought back 'little memories'—a conversation he had here, the way a teammate stood there. Together with the real Elliott, who had also stopped by the set, Hildebrand described experiencing a surprising mix of emotions as they exited the house. 'The feeling of going out that gate again, into the street—the last time we did, it did not turn out well at all,' he said. 'It was an odd feeling, but it was a glorious feeling at the same time, because you knew nothing was going to happen on the other side.' [Read: A film that throws out the war-movie playbook] As such, despite its intensity, Warfare offers some semblance of satisfaction—and not just for the SEALs whose memories have been rendered on-screen. Many movies, Mendoza said, have contributed to perpetuating distressing stereotypes about veterans—that they're all suffering from PTSD, too tortured and traumatized to function. He wanted Warfare to push back against generalizations by keeping the audience at an emotional remove. The movie's portrayal of the front lines stays focused on the action. 'Is it disturbing? Yeah,' Mendoza told me of the film's observational nature. 'But it's truthful.' For Hildebrand, being able to revisit the incident and talk with Mendoza about it was therapeutic. After everyone returned home, he told me, their platoon 'kind of just coexisted. Everybody was still friends, but we didn't have parties and get-togethers and even just time to sit down and talk and get those stories out.' Hildebrand said that Warfare enabled him to corroborate his memories with the other men who were there. (He made it clear that he couldn't speak for everyone; some of the SEALs couldn't be reached, and the names of 14 of the 20 men involved have been changed in the film to protect their identity.) For Mendoza, the process of talking about the incident with other members of the platoon, and with Garland, meant having someone 'explaining it back to you probably even in a better way than you described it to them in the first place. And then you feel heard, you feel understood. You're like, Okay, finally I think I'm able to let this go.' Still, Mendoza said, 'Just because the movie's done doesn't mean we're healed.' Every blunder seems to have lingered in their minds: In one scene, Lieutenant Macdonald (Michael Gandolfini) accidentally injects morphine into his own hand while trying to ease Elliott's pain. In another, Erik (Poulter), a captain who had largely ensured that everyone remained calm, suddenly chokes while instructing the platoon on what to do. Some men even kick Sam's legs as they pass by him, a misguided display of bravado that fails to raise spirits and only injures him further. [Read: A civil-war movie with no one worth cheering] Warfare opens with a scene set the night before the incident; in it, the platoon members hype themselves up by watching the notoriously racy music video for Eric Prydz's 'Call on Me,' swaying together as one big, sweaty, testosterone-fueled mass. The movie ends on a shot of the silent Ramadi street after the gunfire has faded. In between, the film, like Civil War, never delves into the politics of the conflict; it neither commends nor condemns the fighting. It just leaves the audience with the sense that the hours the group spent trapped irrevocably changed them. For Mendoza, the explosion that incapacitated his teammates 'rewired' his brain; he told me he's been dreaming about what happened for 20 years. Some of his dreams echo reality. Others, including one in which Elliott gets back up after the explosion and is completely unharmed, are so fantastical and disorienting that Mendoza wishes he won't ever wake up. Working on the film has helped him dissipate some of that confusion. 'I don't know what's real and what's not real sometimes,' he said. But making Warfare 'helped organize those memories and cancel out which ones weren't real,' he told me. 'It just kind of keeps these memories in line.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Will Poulter and Kit Connor: We shaved each other's heads before filming Warfare
The young cast of Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza's film Warfare had to bond pretty quickly, to play a US military unit whose lives depended on each other, during the Iraq war in 2006. Familiarity was crucial, so before filming began, the cast were sent on a three-week military bootcamp. They lived together, learning military jargon and gun safety and were pushed beyond their limits - all of which brought them closer together. First off though, they agreed to shave each other's heads to look the part, boosting trust and familiarity. "We shaved our heads on day one, and got tattoos at the end of the process, so it bookended the experience," Poulter tells the BBC. The actor, who recently appeared in The Bear and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, plays Captain Eric, who was part of a group of US soldiers and Iraqi scouts on a surveillance mission. We see how it goes wrong, with devastating consequences. Heartstopper star Connor plays newcomer Tommy, hitting home how young the soldiers were - he's just turned 21, the same age Tommy was at the time. The actor says the decision to get a shared tattoo with his castmates after filming wrapped was a "no-brainer". The casts of The Avengers and The Lord of the Rings did the same thing after their final films. Warfare's actors decided their tattoo would say "Call On Me", to reflect their brotherhood, while referencing Erik Prydz's 2004 dance hit, which kicks the film off. The cast features some other big names, including Reservation Dogs' D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Shōgun's Cosmo Jarvis, Stranger Things and the forthcoming Beatles biopic's Joseph Quinn, and Riverdale's Charles Melton. "It was really formative for me," Connor says about his time on the film. "I've made friends I really do believe I will know for a long time. "We all wanted to commemorate it - we are so proud of the work we've done together." The movie is based entirely on a real-life mission that took place during the Iraq war, and is built on the memories of the US soldiers who were there. The group was embedded in the home of an ordinary Iraqi family, who we briefly see in the film, in Ramadi - an area controlled by Al-Qaeda forces. The military's goal had been to slip into and observe the area under the cover of darkness, to ensure the safe passage of ground forces there the next day. What they didn't know what that they were next door to an insurgent house, making them the target of an attack. Shot in real-time, Warfare has no music or flashbacks, so there's no let-up for the audience. You're dropped into the thick of the action for the whole film. The soldiers in command have to make split-second decisions amid the pain and chaos, with the Iraqi family caught in the crossfire. Oscar nominee Garland, whose back catalogue includes the 28 Days film franchise and Ex Machina, got the idea for Warfare when he was making last year's film Civil War. He was working on the battle scenes with Hollywood stunt man and gunfight co-ordinator Ray Mendoza. "During the edit process of Civil War, I was able to really focus on some of the work Ray had done, and how sophisticated and how nuanced it was," Garland recalls. They got chatting about Mendoza's previous life as a US Navy Seal, and about the Ramadi operation, where he was its communications officer. Mendoza said he'd always wanted to make a film about that mission. The veteran had a very big reason for wanting to recreate what happened that day - to help replace the lost memories of his colleague Elliott Miller. Miller, a former Navy Seal, was so badly injured in Ramadi that he suffered traumatic brain injury and memory loss, and had to have a leg amputated. During the mission, Mendoza carried the unconscious soldier to the rescue tank that ultimately saved his life. "Elliott doesn't remember it, and when he woke up, he had a lot of questions," Mendoza says. "No matter how many maps we drew, or how many times we wrote it out - without that core memory, I think he's had a hard time. "It just raised more questions than answers. So I wanted to recreate this one." So Garland and Mendoza decided to make Warfare together, sharing writing and directing credits, and dedicating the film to Miller. The crucial question is whether seeing the film helped Miller piece things together. "It did, yeah - he was a sponge," Mendoza says. "We walked him through it - he had a lot of questions, he's got kids that have questions. "It's now a film memory, but it's as close as he's gonna have – he's super grateful." Miller was played by Jarvis, who calls him "a funny guy... he's great - a living embodiment of perseverance". It was a "unique situation to be in when you're entrusted with portraying somebody that's sitting right across from you", Jarvis said, about having the person he was playing actually on set. "But because he didn't remember [what happened], a lot of my references had to come from his colleagues." The soldiers' casting has caused some excitement online, with some publications breathily calling the actors "all of the internet's boyfriends" and "red hot rising stars". Garland arches an eyebrow at this, and Mendoza jumps in to talk about why those actors were chosen. "I've said this to them, so I'm not trying to offend them, but we weren't looking for the best actors. They're all great actors. We were looking for the right actors," he says. "So what that means is their willingness to push their bodies past a comfort level that they're maybe not used to. 'You're gonna be exhausted. You're gonna be required to rely on other people. It's not about you, it's about the team'. "And the ones that jump at that opportunity, you're like, 'Yep, that's the attitude that we need'." Collating and cross-checking the soldiers' memories was a big job, largely undertaken by Garland. "I think there's an inherent value in attempting to be honest and truthful about something as serious and significant as war," he says. He shot the film in a studio in a suburb north of London, on a former World War Two airfield, making it in real-time to recreate "a real incident of combat... as honestly, forensically and accurately as possible". Not surprisingly, while sharing credits with Garland, former US Navy Seal Mendoza ran the actors' bootcamp. He was played by Woon-A-Tai, who calls him "a brilliant instructor who instilled a lot of confidence in us", while also making gun safety a top priority. The actor was also fascinated by the narrative not being "dramatised or Hollywoodised". "To see these guys not obey orders - and do what they needed to save their platoon was interesting to me," he says, talking about the soldiers' evacuation process. Mendoza thinks the film may also help veterans who are struggling to express what warfare can be like. "Some of these things are harder to explain in words," he says. "So art imagery is how I'm able to communicate that." Connor echoes this, saying: "A lot of these men are very much less inclined to talk about themselves in these situations, whether it be to be due to humility, or a difficulty in really articulating it. "A lot of them just don't really enjoy talking about their involvement." The film has been called "the most harrowing – and honest – depiction of modern combat ever made" by the Telegraph, while the New Yorker said it offers a "hyperrealist rebuke of the American war movie". The Guardian said the "film-makers' message gets lost in the deafening blizzard of battle", while Empire added: "It may well be cinema's most effective, purest anti-war film: there is no sentimentality, no hand-wringing, but most significantly not a second of it makes war look cool, or attractive." Poulter says he admires the film-makers' determination to make Warfare purely factual. "Hopefully this film contributes to a better understanding of just how negative, and how the consequences of war are characterised by a lot of loss... "I think this is as much an anti-war film as you can possibly hope to see." Warfare is out in cinemas on Friday, 18 April. How invasion plunged Iraq into decades of chaos
See - Sada Elbalad
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Elizabeth Olsen to Star in FX Drama Pilot "Seven Sisters"
FX has ordered a pilot for a new drama series starring Elizabeth Olsen, which will see the actress reunite with her 'Martha Marcy May Marlene' director Sean Durkin. The pair's new collaboration will also carry an alliterative, though shorter, title: 'Seven Sisters.' The episode, from FX Productions will see Olsen playing a sister who begins to hear a mysterious voice, leading her large family (presumably of seven sisters, plus potentially more members) to unravel under the weight of their secrets. Along with Olsen and Durkin's attachment, Will Arbery is credited for writing the pilot. Arbery, Durkin and Garrett Basch are executive producers. Basch has a proven relationship with FX, where his banner Dive holds a first-look deal. He's launched several series at the network, including 'Devs,' 'Reservation Dogs' and 'What We Do in the Shadow,' as well as an upcoming noir starring Ethan Hawke from 'Dogs' co-creator Sterlin Harjo. The 'Seven Sisters' pilot sees Olsen and Durkin reuniting nearly a decade and a half after debuting the indie 'Martha Marcy May Marlene.' The film marked Durkin's first feature film, kicking off a body of work that has gone on to include Jude Law and Carrie Coon's dark comedy 'The Nest' and the wrestling weepie biopic 'The Iron Claw.' 'Martha Marcy' was also Olsen's first film performance outside of child actor turns in family films starring her sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley. The thriller earned strong reviews at the time and was nominated for four awards at the Independent Spirits, with nods for best first feature and Olsen in best female lead. Durkin won a directing award at Sundance after the film's festival premiere.
