There is a politic to Warfare that goes underwritten. It cannot be avoided entirely -it is after all set in the middle of the Iraq War, the first highly contentious geopolitical conflict of the twenty-first century, and its baggage is apparent even if not intended to be by the filmmakers -an assumption of that is easy to make given the film is co-written and co-directed by Ray Mendoza, an Iraq veteran who is in fact also one of the characters. But as much as his movie contains the consequences of its context, the ruins of a neighbourhood in Ramadi, the underlying machismo of platoon culture, and the general stupidity of that particular war effort at the hands of its warmongers, the film endeavours to broadly disregard all that in simply illustrating with precise accuracy the chaos, violence, and trauma experienced by soldiers in the heat of uncertain battle.
The movie’s script is adapted directly from the testimonies of members of Navy SEAL Time Alpha One that was stationed in Ramadi in 2006, and presents a re-enactment more than a dramatization of what they went through while holed up in an apartment surrounded by insurgents. The dialogue is almost entirely technical and the film plays out in close to real time as the SEALs coordinate their tactics, react to bombardments and critical injuries, and manage a retreat, amounting to a distinctly brutal and intimate account of what service in a war zone looks and feels like. The craft of Alex Garland -the film’s other co-director, who Mendoza had worked with in his capacity as consultant and military supervisor on Civil War- lends no degree of artifice to the proceedings yet is subtly very intent and methodical. There are some interesting choices to the filmmaking no question.
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays Mendoza in his first major leading role, although he does not feel like the main character. A lot of the movie is seen from his perspective, but not all of it, and other characters take up just as much screen-time. Perhaps with respect to the team effort so critical to the mission or simply the nature of this film’s unusual screenplay, there is a true ensemble tenor to the film -everybody is accentuated, and yet by design nobody has much real characterization. Beyond their relevant actions, these guys are fully anonymous -only Mendoza and sniper Elliott Miller, played here by Cosmo Jarvis, consented to their names being used. Of course the choice to avoid diving into personalities makes the figures and their experiences relate a little more holistically, at least as far as military veterans are concerned, who likely understand deeply exactly what is being said and what is going on. Though bits of individual identity seep in anyway, such as an unstated but readable rivalry between Will Poulter’s commanding officer Eric and a petty officer Sam (Joseph Quinn), who seems eager to dole out orders himself. Or the pressure, confusion, and guilt that colour Eric’s demeanour through the second half of the movie. There’s the occasionally petrified inexperience of gunner Tommy (Kit Connor), and obviously the desperation and fear that Woon-A-Tai shows as Mendoza throughout. A big scene of laddish comradery opens the film, as they are at camp grouped around a television screen watching the sexually charged music video for Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me”, impressing some of that rowdy masculine energy so common of depictions of soldiers, followed up of course by some silent hijinks as they move in on a house to occupy as part of their surveillance.
This house, which a local family resides in, scared out of their wits by the American intruders, is where the duration of the movie is set -its residents sequestered together in a bedroom as the soldiers upend the home for their purposes, before it is itself attacked ruthlessly by neighbouring insurgents. The battering it receives is dwarfed though by what the soldiers undergo. And that is really the crux of the movie's effect. We have seen set-pieces in war movies more lethal and uncompromising than what is depicted here, and yet this movie's strict realism gives it an almost unprecedented edge in intensity. We are placed directly within the atmosphere of the situation, the uncertainty, and the escalating horror -especially once their hideout is ascertained and the unit finds itself under heavy fire.
Rendered through a mixture of handheld camerawork and more versatile cinematography, as well as blots of numbing shell shock where appropriate, the chaos of an evacuation process amidst heavy artillery is coupled with the urgency of a pair of critical injuries that occur when an IED explosion thwarts an initial escape attempt. And these wounds, to the legs of both victims and an arm of one, having to be tended to in the heat of the moment without a field medic, it is pretty visceral; a harried mixture of bullet-fire and screaming forming the soundtrack for some pretty graphic improvised first aid. The attention to detail is striking, not just in the gnarly realism of the wounds and the efforts to alleviate them -which at one point involves kneeling on them to apply pressure-, but in the anguish of the characters’ suffering from them and the horror of those witnessing perhaps for the first time this level of violence and desperation. It is a mess of a circumstance but it is relayed coherently, even through all the military talk and pressurized wall of sound. The soldiers' humanity still rings out. Low-key one of the most effective beats of the movie is when reinforcements make it into the building and the first thing their CO, played by Charles Melton, does is a wellness check on Eric's mental health -I have never seen a war movie account for that consideration.
Warfare is a movie that certainly valourizes the troops -its end credits are illustrated with photos of the real people (faces often blurred) next to their actor, with some even having visited the set. And though that sort of sentiment often stings in media as propaganda -to uplift the military-industrial complex and the war machine, that doesn't quite come across in this film that is too horrifying to have any value as a recruitment tool and expresses though subtly a healthy degree of skepticism in the U.S. military as a positive force on the world stage. There is little tactical objective in this guerrilla engagement, for the heroes it is just about making it out alive from the shelter they only just sequestered themselves in. The ratio of the cost to the apparent fruitlessness of the whole thing is not easy to ignore. And Mendoza and Garland make a very deliberate choice in the ending of the movie, truly putting into perspective what has been gained and lost in a skirmish of just over an hour, and who it has really impacted most.
Though smaller in scale and more intimate in focus, Warfare is the most effective Iraq War film since The Hurt Locker -at least the only one to equal its intensity. The unconventional approach to translating this true story, one that stands in for many single moments in that campaign, makes for a novel enough movie experience on its own. But that commitment in concert with an intricate execution of the relentless mayhem of bloody war and a critical humanity to its soldiers in spite of an intentional muting of personality, makes the movie something a little more special. The soldiers' story, unvarnished.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jordanbosch.bsky.social
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Comments
Post a Comment