Latest news with #U.S.NavySEALs
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Warfare' star and filmmaker on establishing a 'brotherhood' and making a movie based 'only' on memories
Following his film Civil War, Alex Garland has taken another different approach to a war film with Warfare (now in theatres), based on the memories of a U.S. Navy SEALs unit from a real-life mission in Iraq in 2006. One member of that unit was Garland's co-writer and co-director, Ray Mendoza. The 95-minute film depicts one specific siege in real time. A group of soldiers, played by a cast that includes Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Michael Gandolfini, Kit Connor, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Noah Centineo and Charles Melton, are surveilling the area surrounding an apartment they took over from an Iraqi family. What they didn't realize is that they were next to an insurgent house, with the SEAL team trying to escape amid attacks. Mendoza was tasked with not just tapping into his own memories, but reaching out to members from his SEAL team to pull from their memories as well. It also served as a tribute to wounded SEAL member Elliott Miller, played by Jarvis in the film, who has no memory of that day in 2006. "For probably half of them, it was easy, because I stayed in contact with them for a while. We're close friends. We go baseball games," Mendoza told Yahoo Canada in Toronto. "Some of them already knew that I've always wanted to do this. "Then there were some of the guys that were still in the community, ... so that's a little harder, ... because they're a little more ... on the defence about, 'Why are you doing it? Why now?' So yes, that part's hard. But if your intent is pure, they'll sniff that out. ... Some of the difficult stuff came [in] retelling the stories and hearing them retell it." While some of the members of Mendoza's SEAL team were on set during the filming of the movie, Woon-A-Tai was in a unique position, because he plays Mendoza in the film. "It was a pleasure, honestly," the actor said. "Any microscopic detail that I wanted to accomplish, ... he was there for them." "Very open, very open on tough subjects, very open on anything. So it was a pleasure. At first it was very nerve-wracking, but then I came to realize that it was the best situation." For Garland, making a movie based on memories shifted the approach to filmmaking in this circumstance. "It removes one set of questions, which is, 'Should the scene be in the story or not?' So all of those kinds of questions just disappear," Garland said. "And then it brings another set of questions, which is, normally ... I'd be thinking, 'How do I make this? How do I want it to be?' And in this film you'd be asking, 'How do we make this? How [this person] felt, ... have we heard them properly? And having heard them, are we recreating it properly?'" "One whole set of questions vanished and another whole set of questions arrived, but it was, I'd say, just a very interesting, powerful, kind of moving exercise to take part in." But what's also fascinating about the approach to Warfare is that human are unreliable narrators of their memories, and memories can be severely impacted by things we experience. But that's what everyone behind this film committed to working with. "We've all disagreed with people over a recollection of an incident, ... it's amazing the degrees to which memories can separate out, and we would encounter it constantly," Garland said."It's partly because people have tunnel vision under stress. It's partly because things get emitted under stress, and also the passage of time and concussion, very unusual events to try and pull memories from." "If somebody experiences something alone, and then years later they try to recount it, what you might get is almost like a sequence of snapshots from them, rather than a flow of action, in some respects. ... I'm sure all of us, when we try to remember our early childhood, we're not quite sure, is this something one of my parents told me happened, or am I actually remembering it? So there's a lot of complicated things, but you embrace it. That's actually what makes the film interesting. ... We're not saying this is exactly what happened. What we're saying is, this is what it felt like. And memories are often connected to what things feel like." But this is also something Garland and Mendoza establish at the beginning of the film, telling the audience that this is a film based "only" on memories. As Mendoza describes it, they're telling the audience how to watch the film. "It doesn't say, this film is based off memories, or based on true stories. It says only memories," Garland said. "If you were not there, you didn't have memory, and that meant you weren't allowed to say, 'Hey it would be cool if,' or 'Wouldn't it be interesting if.' That wasn't part of our rule set." While Warfare has been celebrated for its visceral and undramatized portrayal of war, fans have also really connected to the obvious camaraderie between the cast, including their matching tattoos. As Woon-A-Tai explained, this "brotherhood" began during their three-and-a-half week bootcamp, designed by Mendoza. "We started our first night all together as we buzzed all of each other's hair together. ... They put us in a beautiful small town, ... outside of London ... and putting us there, it made a lot of the locals from Britain not want to go back home, and so we spent almost every waking moment together," Woon-A-Tai said. "We spent three-and-a-half weeks ... working, doing a boot camp, to take it even further." "That was by design. I knew that was going to happen," Mendoza added. "Not only are they just hanging around each other, but really forcing them to fail, forcing them to see what their weaknesses are." Woon-A-Tai said he really had to push past his limits in the training for this film, from Navy SEAL push-ups to learning how to use a gun. But a core element of the training was also the rule that, "nobody was finished until everybody was finished." "These small little details, ... subtle stuff, is really what brought our brotherhood together," Woon-A-Tai said.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Warfare' Review: A Combat Movie That Refuses to Entertain
The highest praise I can offer 'Warfare,' a tough, relentless movie about life and death in battle, is that it isn't thrilling. It is, rather, a purposely sad, angry movie, and as much a lament as a warning. That's to the point of this factually informed fiction, which tracks a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs during a calamitous mission in Iraq. There, under cover of an otherwise still night, the troops take over a seemingly ordinary home, place the inhabitants under guard and stake out the area. Then the men watch and wait while sitting, standing and sometimes agitatedly peering out windows in the name of a cause that no one ever explains outright. Among those not explaining any of this — the mission, its averred rationale and its carnage — are the writers-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Garland's last movie was 'Civil War' (2024), an eerie, uncomfortably realistic slice of speculative fiction set in a war-torn United States that Mendoza, a former member of the SEALs, worked on as the military adviser. That experience led to a friendship and now to 'Warfare,' which is based on a real operation in 2006 that Mendoza took part in; at the time, the Americans were attempting to take control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. The war was three years old by then, an estimated 600,000 Iraqis were dead and American fatalities would soon reach 3,000. Much of 'Warfare' takes place in real time inside a blocky, two-story building where the inhabitants, including several children, are sleeping when the Americans enter. Crowded into a bedroom where they're watched over by a rotation of guards, the Iraqis aren't named (not that I remember, at least) and are scarcely individualized. The military men are more distinct, largely because they're either played by somewhat familiar faces — including Will Poulter, as Captain Erik, the head of the initial operation — or have distinguishing features, like the mustache on Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis), the head sniper. (The movie is dedicated to the real Elliott Miller, who somehow survived the operation.) Garland is very good at building suspense, and he's especially adept at turning quiet spaces into unrelenting zones of dread. 'Warfare' opens with a burst of raucous silliness as uniformed men crowded around a monitor in a small room watch a risibly tacky music video for the dance tune 'Call on Me.' Set in what's meant to be an aerobics studio circa the 1980s, the video features a throng of big-haired, tight-thighed hotties (and one pitiful dude), stretching and pumping as if warming up for an orgiastic marathon. It's a spectacle that the guys watch with collective pleasure and much whooping, and which underscores that you've entered a specific world of men that, minutes later, goes spookily quiet in an unnamed town. The SEAL unit takes over the Iraqi house quickly, breaking through a bricked-off upper floor, where most of them position themselves. In one room, Elliott, eyes squinting and face slicked with sweat, lies on his belly on a makeshift platform watching the street through a large, jagged peephole punched in the wall. As the minutes tick off, the men continue waiting as they listen to radio commands and watch surveillance footage. Every so often, Elliott scribbles a note as does a second sniper, Frank (Taylor John Smith). Frank briefly takes over when Elliott needs a break to replace his chewing tobacco and to relieve himself, which he does by urinating in an empty water bottle, something that I doubt that John Wayne did. The nadir of Wayne's career was 'The Green Berets' (1968), a jingoistic war movie set in Vietnam that Renata Adler, in a review for The New York Times, memorably took down as 'so unspeakable, so stupid, so rotten and false' that, she argued, it was an invitation to grieve 'what has happened to the fantasy-making apparatus in this country.' Over the next half-century, that apparatus continued to chug and sometimes cruise along while releasing fewer kinds of movies. The year that 'The Green Berets' opened, the studios still offered real genre variety, including musicals. These days it can seem like the only multiplex choice is some kind of war movie populated with combatants wearing superhero tights, cop uniforms, whatever. American moviemakers have become so very good at making war — a talent that digital effects have only intensified — that it can seem like every new release is another occasion to enjoy death and destruction. As counterintuitive as it seems, Garland and Mendoza push against that tendency with 'Warfare,' primarily by sucking the putative fun out of watching some characters shoot and kill others. That's more difficult than perhaps it sounds in part because violence seems almost naturally cinematic. At least that's how it can feel after more than a century of westerns, adventures, gangster films, detective stories, superhero flicks and so on, whether they feature bloodless bloodletting or artfully lit and shot arterial sprays. The performances in 'Warfare' are uniformly persuasive and restrained, except when wounded men scream in pain, which they do: At least one dies, and others are hideously wounded. But there is no admirably staged bloodshed in 'Warfare,' no award-worthy soliloquies. Instead, there is fighting and more fighting, explosions, smoke and chaos, and a deep, underlying seriousness that can feel rare in contemporary American movies. At one point, a woman shrieks 'Why?,' which is finally the only question that seems worth asking when those in power send other people's children off to die. I think that Garland and Mendoza are asking it, too. I doubt that John Wayne would like 'Warfare,' which is also high praise.
Reuters
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Film 'Warfare' immerses viewers in real-time Iraq War mission
LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) - New A24 movie "Warfare" places audiences among a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs as they battle insurgents during the Iraq War. Written and directed by combat veteran Ray Mendoza and filmmaker Alex Garland, the movie is a real-time re-enactment of a 2006 surveillance operation gone awry and based entirely on the memories of Mendoza and the soldiers who took part in it. "Warfare" follows Garland's 2024 film "Civil War", which Mendoza worked on as a military supervisor, and features an ensemble cast of top talent including Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor and D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. It pays tribute to wounded sniper Elliott Miller, played by Jarvis, whose recollections of the events are sparse. "I wanted to make it for Elliott," Mendoza said at the film's London premiere on Tuesday. "He doesn't recall what happened. Over the years he's asked a lot of questions. I've been in this industry for 15 years now, and it's kind of a goal, a journey, for me to acquire all the tools and skills I needed along the way to make it." The filmmakers set a rule to "not invent or heighten anything" and recount the events as accurately as possible. "What films usually do is they find a way to dramatize, and that sometimes means romanticise combat and conflict and to be inaccurate. We tried to strip all of that out and present war in this instance, as it was. That was our sole intention," Garland said. "Warfare" sees the young men taking up positions in a residential building in the dark of night. It depicts their close bond and the chaos that ensues when they come under fire and try to evacuate wounded soldiers. For the cast, portraying real people and recreating the events in Ramadi, came with responsibility. "We had to try and do the story, what happened, justice and try to do these characters justice," said Connor, who plays gunner Tommy. "Warfare" was shot outside London over five weeks in early 2024. In preparation for its extended takes and carefully choreographed scenes, the cast took part in an intensive three-week boot camp. "That included weapons handling, strategy, tactics, some of the language that is unique to SEALs and the military. We learned radio communications, first aid, some navigational stuff, and then went out on a few exercises as a team and put it into practice," said Poulter, who plays an officer in charge of the operation. Although immersing audiences in warfare, the movie is rooted in humanity, said Michael Gandolfini, who plays Lieutenant Macdonald. "It's about human beings and it's about consequences of human beings doing these things to other humans. You walk out, I believe, feeling immense pain but immense humanity."
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Warfare Review: War Movies Rarely Feel This Real
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. One of my go-to gripes about movies these days is that titles tend to really suck. There is a tendency for them to be far too generic and simple, and in their generic simple-ness, they often fail to properly represent the story and/or are totally forgettable (I have a whole special rant about features that go the 'common first name' route that I can save for another time). In a vacuum, Warfare from writer/directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland would be a film that I would normally complain about in this context, but in this particular case, the generic and simple title is actually perfect: as its name suggests, it's a cinematic experience of warfare, and it is breathtaking. Warfare Release Date: April 11, 2025Directed By: Ray Mendoza and Alex GarlandWritten By: Ray Mendoza & Alex GarlandStarring: D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Adain Bradley, Noah Centineo, Evan Holtzman, Henry Zaga, Joseph Quinn, and Charles MeltonRating: R for intense war violence and bloody/grisly images, and language throughoutRuntime: 94 minutes A high-concept thriller based on a true story, the movie serves to take you back to the year 2006 and embed you with a group of soldiers operating during the Iraq War, and it's an utterly transfixing 94 minutes that flies by as it nails you to your seat in suspense, terrified of what may happen next. It makes no apologies for reality, and it doesn't go through the process of making everything specifically cinematic with dumbed-down jargon, sweeping narrative developments or constructed character arcs. It exists to be a recreation of actual events from the memories of co-director/co-writer Ray Mendoza, and in its impeccable verisimilitude and constant intensity, it's an awesome piece of work. After a perfect opening establishing the period setting, with gleeful soldiers gathering around a laptop to witness the audacious music video for Eric Prydz's 'Call On Me,' a unit of U.S. Navy SEALs executes maneuvers at night in Ramadi, Iraq – insurgent territory – to occupy a two-floor residence. In daylight hours, things are quiet but intense in the apartment building, as various positions are set up to keep an eye on locals and track enemy behavior. The streets are monitored through the lens of a sniper rifle… and when things go to hell, they get there quickly. The unit is discovered and targeted, with shots fired and grenades thrown, but everything goes from bad to worse during an attempted evacuation. The SEALS try to make their way to an armored personnel carrier deployed to their location, but the activation of an improvised explosive device aborts the effort and leaves multiple dead and two badly injured. While enemy fire persists, a rescue operation is initiated, and the soldiers fight to survive while they await backup and extraction. The power of Warfare is found in its focus and intensity, defying cinematic convention in the process. There are no overt efforts to create specific personalities or individually introduce characters and their independent roles, and there are no heart-to-heart conversations or meaningful dialogues about life back home to de-escalate action before ramping things back up again and forge familiar pacing. These are things that I might negatively criticize in other works, but Mendoza and Garland earn this minimalism with clear intentions that end up being extremely powerful and effective. The film's constant mode is realism, and the spell is never broken (which is actually somewhat strange considering that my method of recognizing characters was identifying the various actors in the ensemble from their other works). It never halts action to have soldiers clearly lay out missions and objectives to each other, and radio communication isn't dumbed down as civilian speak. Casual exposition is blissfully non-existent, but everything is also perfectly clear via context and action, and this serves to simply grip you harder amid the action. Despite the familiar faces, you're never specifically reminded that you are watching a movie, and it is hypnotizing and powerful. Set in and around a single location, the scope of Warfare is very small, but that also makes it intimate, and the visceral impact of the filmmaking is massive. Whether it's via tight close ups within the limited confines of the Iraqi household or first-person looks through the scope of a sniper rifle, the cinematography strategically entrenches the audience alongside the film's characters throughout the first act, and thus, when the shit hits the fan, you feel like you are trapped in the nightmare right alongside them. Deserving particularly special mention is the sound design, as no aesthetic aspect of the movie better sells the hell. When the IED explodes and rocks the armored personnel carrier, I felt like my own body was launched 10 feet into the air, and the ratatat and whistling of gunfire practically has you expecting the feeling of plaster dust on your cheeks as your eyes stay fixed on the screen. More than just shocking and terrifying noise, however, the film is also able to lock you into the characters' various perspectives with dangerous ringing silence and a wild sequence of overwhelming radio chatter. This is a movie that you feel. While Alex Garland's works are usually about big ideas – from the meditations on artificial intelligence in Ex Machina to the valor of journalism in Civil War – his collaboration with Ray Mendoza is relatively uncomplicated but equally powerful. Its aim is to convey an experience, and it does so with incredible skill and emotional impact: it immerses you in its terror and horror and actually hits at your fight-or-flight response. It's an unconventional cinematic experience, but it's a deeply effective one.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Warfare' review: Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza make the most undramatized Iraq War film
Last year filmmaker Alex Garland gave us the "anti-war" movie Civil War, and now he's continued to push the boundaries of our concept of war films with Warfare (in theatres April 11). Co-writing and co-directing the movie with Ray Mendoza, with an impressive ensemble cast that includes Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Michael Gandolfini, Kit Connor, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Noah Centineo and Charles Melton, it's a unique cinematic experience. Much of that is due to this deeply impactful feeling of dread and looming fear that Garland and Mendoza are able to create. Ultimately the filmmakers achieve an incredible visceral portrait for war. Warfare takes us through a real-life mission in Iraq for a U.S. Navy SEALs unit, which Mendoza was a part of, pulling from his own memories and the memories of other soldiers he was with to craft this story. But don't be alarmed when you watch the first scene, you didn't stumble into the wrong theatre. The film doesn't begin with any combat scenes at all, but rather a group of men crowded around a computer watching the music video to Eric Prydz's 'Call on Me.' As we get into the mission, there's no score, there's no narration, there aren't characters talking about their American patriotism, or desire to be reunited with the loved ones they left at home. It takes a lot of war movie clichés off the table. Instead, much of the film involves this group of men surveilling the goings on outside of an Iraqi apartment they've taken over. They sit in this apartment, armed with sniper rifles, until the moment when Al-Qaeda insurgents strike and we enter the brutal, gruesome reality of combat. While much has been said about projects that strive to achieve an "authentic" portrayal of war and combat, Warfare's achievement makes it a particularly undramatized combat film. The reality is that most war movies quickly feel like American propaganda, but the lack of context about this mission we see in Warfare makes it feel like people who love those "rah-rah America" movies may not be so pleased. Warfare does take some brief time to touch on exactly how cruel this unit of soldiers was to the Iraqi family in overtaking their home. But ultimately, it's still another Iraq War film from the American perspective. What feels satisfying is the attention to the smallest details of the film. How would a soldier write in his notebook? What happens when someone needs to use the restroom? What happens when someone leaves their supplies behind? Which made this feel more intimate than many film in the genre. Once the combat begins, that's when Garland and Mendoza settle into the real brutality of war. When an IED goes off there's yelling, body parts blown off, and gruesome injuries that will likely made some feel sick to their stomach, but also inserts this concept that these men are really just expendable. There's a heart-pounding effect from Warfare that has a lingering impact that breaks free from traditional movie-making conventions, for an overall compelling experience.
