The feeling of peeling your shirt from the back of the theater seat and seeing the photographs of the real Navy SEALS involved paired next to the actors that portrayed them are the two clearest signs that “Warfare,” the new film from Alex Garland (“Civil War,” “28 Days Later”), has finally ended. And what a harrowing, relentless, unflinching journey it is. You don’t watch “Warfare;” you survive it.
The movie follows a team of Navy Seals, all based on real soldiers, during a mission that turned sideways in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. Warfare” is written by Ray Mendoza, a 16-year Navy SEAL veteran who was deployed in Iraq twice. He paired himself with Garland to recreate the horror he witnessed firsthand, and this movie is as much a horror film as it is a military movie and an action thriller.
My review of #Warfare: “Warfare is a visceral slice-of-life-and-death with grisly scenes that would make Hieronymus Bosch turn his face away, but it is the portrait of the personal toll paid by the soldiers that resonates.” Read the review here: https://t.co/2o7UqnGLLI pic.twitter.com/dCaEkR7Vyv
— Richard Crouse (@RichardCrouse) April 11, 2025
It’s almost a complete rejection of “1917,” a WWI film that strips the violence of organized military combat in favor of identifying the beauty that perseveres, captured through its gorgeous cinematography. Don’t be fooled; this is not a pro-military film filled with patriotic propaganda. It’s a nasty 95-minute adventure that doesn’t attempt to shield the public from the atrocities of war through narratives and other Hollywood polish.
It doesn’t ask questions. It doesn’t provide answers. It’s merely a document.
Some have described “Warfare” as the opening 30 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” when the Americans storm Omaha Beach, for an entire movie. Technically impressive and loud as hell, if you have the stomach for a film like this, you will be rewarded with one of the most visceral movies ever made. “Warfare” is in theaters Friday.
WARFARE won’t be for everyone. It’s grim, intense, and intentionally uncomfortable.
But as with Alex Garland’s last film, CIVIL WAR—to which WARFARE is a kind of companion piece—I was a huge, huge fan. It’s the best movie I have seen so far this year. https://t.co/d2Jci1biXS
— Suderman (@petersuderman) April 10, 2025
The film is about an American platoon in Iraq; there is no admirably staged bloodshed or witty repartee. That’s the point. 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, instead, 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. 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.
I interviewed the production designer, sound designers and prosthetic/make-up artisans behind WARFARE to break down the film’s most visceral war sequence. Check it out after watching Alex Garland’s latest! @Variety https://t.co/6xudMi2J9z
— matt minton 🏳️🌈🎬 (@6MattMinton14) April 12, 2025
The men watch and wait while sitting and standing and sometimes agitatedly peer out windows in the name of a cause that no one ever explains outright. The writers-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza are among those not explaining any of this — the mission, its averred rationale, and its carnage. Garland’s last movie was ” ” (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,” based on a real operation in 2006 that Mendoza took part in; at the time, the Americans were attempting to take the capital of Anbar Province. The war was three years old by then. Much of “Warfare” takes place in real-time inside a blocky, two-story building where the inhabitants, including several children, sleep when the Americans enter.
Crowded into a bedroom where a rotation of guards watches over them, 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 survived the operation.)
Garland is very good at building suspense and is especially adept at turning quiet spaces into unrelenting zones of dread.
“Warfare” opens with a burst of raucous silliness. Uniformed men crowded around a monitor in a small room watch a risibly tacky music video for the dance tune.
A harrowing tale of a real mission
Set in an aerobics studio circa the 1980s, the video features a throng of big-haired, tight-thighed performers 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, listening to radio commands and watching 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 John Wayne ever did.
The movie commits to capturing the taxing, dull tension of knowing that something might happen at any minute. This doesn’t make the film boring; it’s far too stressful for that. It eschews the typical storytelling rules that portray action with peaks and valleys.
Instead, it presents anticipation, chaos, and a cooldown for relief. Compared to Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down,” which introduces its ensemble cast at base camp and lays out personality types and mission specifics, Garland and Mendoza’s film is embedded with Mendoza’s specific unit. The soldiers are surveilling a residence in Ramadi, hoping to clear ground for more troop movement the next day.
They eventually realize that the adjacent place is an insurgent base and must dig in as they are besieged on all sides. Mendoza (played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is presented as an equal unit member, with no individual derring-do highlighted. The camerawork is detached and unshowy, providing long, demanding takes and denying the viewer the respite of cinematic flair.
The cast includes talented actors such as Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn, and Cosmo Jarvis, who provide familiar faces to help the audience comprehend the opaque events. The movie invites viewers to piece together each person’s role amid the chaos and confusion, showcasing how the men respond differently to the unexpected attacks and growing tension. It urges viewers to embrace the frustration and confusion of wartime conflict and experience the anxiety these servicemen felt.
Neglecting to lay out specific stakes diverges from Garland’s previous work, which depicted tumult through the eyes of war photographers and extended a professional oath of impartiality. In contrast, this film does not hint at why these soldiers have signed up for combat or their personal investment in the mission’s purpose. It refrains from sermonizing about the Iraq War’s morality or ratifying any audience member’s belief on the topic, as many historical war films do.
This film is a memory play, an intimate portrait of Mendoza’s personal recollections. The bitter reality of what unfolds over 90 minutes during this challenging day—all that waiting around between the gunfire—gets the viewer thinking about the incremental, tedious surrealism of war. It depicts a circumstance many audiences would likely never want to experience, making confronting the frightening ambiguity without narrative comfort crucial.
