WARFARE
(director/writer: Alex Garland/Ray Mendoza; cinematographer: David J. Thompson; editor: Fin Oates; cast: Joseph Quinn (Sam), D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Ray), Will Poulter (Erik), Cosmo Jarvis (Elliott), Alex Brockdorff (Mikey), Aaron Mackenzie (Kelly), Michael Gandolfini (Lt. Macdonald), Evan Holtzman (Brock), Kit Connor (Tommy), Charles Melton (Jake), Finn Bennett (John), Joe Macauley (Mo), Laurie Duncan (Pete), Jake Lampert (Ted); Runtime: 95; MPAA Rating: R; producers: Matthew Penry, Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich, Peter Rice; DNA Films/A24; 2025-USA/UK)
“The apolitical film offers no anti-war sentiments.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Co-directed and co-written byAlex Garland (“Civil War”/”Men”) and the former soldier in the Iraq War Ray Mendoza who is now a military consultant for war films. It’s a lean and accurate war drama showing us how war in Iraq looks through the eyes of a US Navy SEALs unit on a brutal mission. It involves a real mission that took place in November 2006, in Iraq, as viewed from an aerial reconnaissance computer screen.
An American outfit is hidden in darkness in a residential section in Ramadi. They take over a family apartment in a building to set up a sniper-surveillance mission to provide cover for a ground operation on the city streets. This team includes Ray Mendoza (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), commanding officer Erik (Will Poulter), the sniper Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis), Lt. MacDonald (Michael Gandolfini) and Sam (Joseph Quinn).
Things are botched when the sniper takes a break and is replaced by someone inexperienced, who fails to take out the threatening jihadi in the street and this has disastrous consequences. This scene is loud, ugly and confusing–it’s the film’s ‘War is Hell’ moment.
The apolitical film offers no anti-war sentiments, and has no point to make about the war except it wants to make the viewer feel how the soldier on the mission might have felt.
It’s a bloody war film on another of America’s bad wars after WWII, that’s artfully made as a recruitment film that should appeal to those willing to fight for their country right or wrong and to the veterans of that war who for their own mental health need to see this recreation so they can move on with their lives.
REVIEWED ON 4/4/2025 GRADE: B
dennisschwartzreviews.com