‘Warfare’ Review: Deeply Flawed, Inherently Evil, and Masterful

Rather than return to his horror or science-fiction roots–though he will be doing that in a couple months with 28 Years Later–Alex Garland instead doubled down on the heavily divisive Civil War with another war film Warfare, this one set in the all-too-real dystopian recent past rather than the fictional near future. Co-directed with Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza, whose experiences the film is based on, Garland’s Warfare is a tense single location thriller that unfolds in real time starring D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Kit Connor. The film follows a platoon of Navy SEALS that are pinned down in the home of Iraqi civilians in insurgent territory as they close in to their position. 

As with Civil War, many have already written off Warfare prior to its release, and I wish they hadn’t as there is a lot to like, even if they are heavily flawed films. I can’t exactly blame anyone for not wanting to interact with these movies, however, given how they’ve been marketed. With Civil War, it was Alex Garland and A24 trying to offer their film real-life credibility and make it seem topical to the political climate of the United States as it stood last year, while simultaneously sitting on the fence and refusing to say anything of substance. Civil War itself had nothing much to say at all about current US politics, it was purely a way to market the film through political divisiveness. With Warfare, the marketing has gone in the opposite direction with the film intending to be a deathly serious and authentic depiction of war based only on the memory of those that lived through it, while the marketing is lighthearted. These contradictory notions of making light of the most horrific ordeals while propagating that evil is necessary is exactly how warmongering works. 

With a film like this, the immediate conversation surrounding it will always be whether it’s “propaganda” or not. François Truffaut famously said, “There is no such thing as an anti-war film”, and it is a fairly simple statement but has been one of contention for decades. Rather than explicitly wade into the politics of the Iraq War, Warfare strives to show only the futility and senseless chaotic violence, thus attempting to condemn it. It goes even further than this and actively tries to villainize the platoon the film follows. One of the film’s earliest moments and the catalyst for the events to follow is the platoon breaking into the home of Iraqi civilians, taking it over and taking them hostage. From the jump, Warfare evokes sympathy through the imagery of an Iraqi family huddled in the corner begging for their lives as they’re taken hostage by invading soldiers at gunpoint. However, immediately before this harrowing moment, the film opens with our platoon gathered in front of a TV, dancing and singing to a music video as if at a party rather than war. Not only does the film display this camaraderie in a positive light, it infantilizes these soldiers, revealing them as little more than boys. Yet these boys are capable of immense violence–violence we know to be futile, but deemed justified and necessary.

The majority of the film unfolds in a single room, where the platoon retreats after their evacuation is thwarted by an IED and surrounding insurgents. This confined setting reinforces the theme of futility and stagnation, a war that doesn’t progress. Throughout the runtime, wounded soldiers are shown writhing around on the floor, immobilized and barely clinging to life, screaming and crying for help. They are further infantilized in their helplessness. In this way, the film elicits sympathy for them as they defend themselves from insurgents. To be clear, these points are not a critique of Warfare; in fact, these contradictions are exactly what make it so compelling. The discourse surrounding Warfare of whether it’s propaganda for the U.S. Military has a simple answer with a complex explanation, reflecting the contradictions of the film itself. By nature, war films are propagandistic, and it is impossible to make one apolitical. And yet, Garland and Mendoza seem to consciously wrestle with this truth, neither fully embracing or rejecting it.

In a way, the nature of Warfare and of war films is alluded to in the film itself. Prior to the events of the film, as the platoon waits to deploy into action, they watch the music video to Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me”. This moment, filled with hypersexualized imagery from the video and frat-boy energy from the onlookers, serves to introduce our so-called warriors as they indulge in a moment of carefree pleasure. Just as sex or food or drugs trigger dopamine, so too does violence. War films often mirror this: indulging in the graphic spectacle of intense violence and agony in a way that borders on pornographic. The visceral depiction of suffering and brutality becomes pleasurable, revealing the inherently propagandistic nature of the genre.

Warfare is about as narratively simple as a war film can be, though it’s technically masterful and thematically so rich. It unfolds with a slow and realistic intensity, methodically building tension until it reaches an explosive crescendo. Interspersed moments of silence cut through the hectic and ever-present chaos and violence, heightening their intensity through contrast. Few recent war films have grasped me as Warfare has, certainly more than the far more conceptually ambitious Civil War last year. I am glad to see Alex Garland return to form with 28 Years Later in a couple months, but Warfare exceeded my expectations in its own right. It is a deeply flawed, even inherently evil film–and yet, absolutely captivating. 

Warfare stars D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini, Noah Centineo, and Kit Connor. The film was directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza for A24. It is now playing in theatres worldwide, where US veterans can receive discounts at Regal, Cinemark, and AMC theatres.

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