Warfare

★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

Warfare (2025)

Runtime: 95 minutes

MPAA: Rated R for intense war violence and bloody/grisly images, and language throughout.

It surprised me a little when the first thing that appeared in Alex Garland's Warfare was Call on Me by Eric Prydz, which made me wonder whether I even opened the correct movie in the first place. This cuts to platoon members watching the video enthusiastically and mimicking the moves in the next scene. Was it really necessary, huh?

Former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza was deployed to Iraq admist the then-ongoing Iraq War which would eventually end in 2011. Drawing from his experiences and the testimonies of platoon members, Warfare depicts an encounter on 19 November 2006 after the Battle of Ramadi. He rounds up an ensemble cast of D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn and Charles Melton. True to its story, Warfare is essentially narratively non-existent, yet focused on the group of soldiers as they recount the day where they were ambushed by grenades, airstrikes and gunfire. However, this requires a great deal of patience, as the first half-an-hour of the film somewhat stalls with them actively scanning areas, relaying commands and repeating this action until the enemy attack disrupts this routine.

Garland, alongside Mendoza, don't follow any conventional narrative blueprint or characterisations in synthesising their experiences to the big screen. There is no glorification of war. No heroes. No superhumans. Just the pure, unfiltered lens of war and the people trapped in this chaos. Throughout the entire experience, there's noticeably no musical score either, allowing all scenes to play out based on the power it holds. The sound mixing is superb, the performances are on point, resembling the professionalism and agony of physical injuries, and the technical viscerality of it is impressive. It's a bloody good recreation.

But what's the point of it all? One can argue that, yes, war is pointless. Humans fight and murder each other which feels meaningless in the big picture. Some get severely wounded, and those unfortunately caught in the crossfire are also mentally traumatised from it. I'd like to argue that viewing Warfare is simply summarised as follows: things happened to people, some people died, some people got seriously injured, some people got concussions and many more got disoriented from this. There's no introspection or commentary about the politics, morality or ethics of war and their actions.

Sometimes fascinating stories don't necessarily translate into cinematic viewing. It would make for an interesting documentary, or even YouTube series, one that interrogates their subjects deeper to reveal more insights about war aside from what happened. If I were to be brutally honest, even the most technically sound construction of re-enacted war scenes are outmatched by easily accessible and similar content found in online media. As such, there has to be a perspective, something it has to offer or even say. Without it, Warfare is simply a film you watch and leave it as it is. We are merely spectators watching a recollection. War is terrible, and the experience is harrowing. But to what end?