Review: 'Warfare' puts its casat and the viewer in the middle of battle, in a harrowing depiction of combat during the Iraq War
I’ve never served in the military or seen combat close-up, so I can’t say definitively that writer-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland put viewers in the middle of the fray in their movie “Warfare” — but they create moments of chaos, blood and pain that are as close as I or any other civilian likely will want to be to the fight.
Mendoza served in a Navy SEAL sniper unit during the Iraq War, and the story told here is based on his memory of that time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. There’s a character named Ray, played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (from “Reservation Dogs”), who is providing what appears to be Mendoza’s P.O.V. He’s usually the one on the radio, reporting the situation to superiors back at base and relaying orders from above.
The mission seems simple: Commandeer a house and set up a sniper post that has eyes and rifles trained on an open-air marketplace nearby. Of course, in combat, nothing is simple — and the unit must move the Iraqi families living in the house into a back room while they set up their observation area.
Then there’s gunfire and one word yelled into the sniper’s space: “Grenade!”
In that moment, one sniper is wounded sufficiently that an armored personnel carrier, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, is called in to take the injured man to safety. But when the Bradley gets there, an IED is set off. More damage, more injuries, more carnage and more chaos.
Garland, who last directed “Civil War,” brings the technical firepower to make the fake carnage look and feel as real as he can. Mendoza, who was Garland’s military consultant on “Civil War,” is here to provide his on-the-ground recollection of what that should look and feel like.
The viewer may recognize some of the actors playing SEALs and other military men here, like Will Poulter (“Death of a Unicorn”), Joseph Quinn (“A Quiet Place: Day One”), Charles Melton (“May/December”) or Michael Gandolfini (“The Many Saints of New Jersey”). Others will be less familiar.
Mendoza and Garland (who directed “Civil War,” for which Mendoza was a military consultant) don’t provide backstories for these guys, and if you catch someone’s name, largely It’s incidental. In the dust and sweat and blood, it becomes difficult to tell them apart — and that’s the point.
This isn’t a war movie of your grandparents’ generation, where you knew there would be one farm boy, one guy from Brooklyn, and so on. “Warfare” is about how the camaraderie of the unit — depicted in the first scene, when the men are whooping and hollering at women in leotards in an ‘80s dance-aerobics video — makes these individuals a fighting force, with one shared purpose. That purpose is to do everything to make sure everyone who went out on this mission comes back alive.
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‘Warfare’
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, April 11, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for intense war violence and bloody/grisly images, and language throughout. Running time: 95 minutes.