A war film being ‘based on a true story’ is hardly a novel concept, so it’s a bold move to try and frame your new movie as, basically, the *most* based-on-a-true-story war film ever. Yet, that is exactly the challenge that Alex Garland and co-director Ray Mendoza (a former US Navy SEAL who served as the combat advisor on Garland’s last film, Civil War) have set themselves with Warfare. Taking one of Mendoza’s own missions in 2006 Iraq, it’s a nearly real-time cacophony of chaos and blood, reconstructed in its entirety from the memories of the actual squad, an immersive and thrilling, if also slightly redundant, cinematic mission.
Mendoza himself is played by young Indigenous actor D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai in his first major film role. He’s the first amongst equals in a sprawling ensemble that also includes the likes of Will Poulter as squad leader Erik, Joseph Quinn and Cosmo Jarvis as the soldiers who are swiftly and badly wounded, Kit Connor as the new guy, and plenty of other young, A24-audience friendly actors. They all spend most of their time trapped in one bombarded house in the town of Ramadi as insurgents rain bullets and bombs on their position, simply trying to survive long enough to be evacuated.
Warfare is, to its credit, not a story of heroism, although its overall moral lens is muddy at best, the Iraqis of the story completely disposable – whether you take this as an intentional criticism of the US occupation efforts or just casual Americo-centrism is up to you, but I certainly felt more of the latter. Soldiers shriek in pain and terror, no-one gets the chance to be ‘cool’, and it’s always uncertain if *anything* they’re doing with their guns is having even the slightest effect as they wait to get bailed out by complete technological superiority in the form of tanks and planes.
Before it all goes to complete hell, Garland and Mendoza do a great job of ratcheting up the tension, marinating in that unique warzone emotional mix of numbing boredom and anticipatory fear, while the gunfights are pulverisingly loud and immersive. Certain stylistic tics are returned to far too often – hello again, woozy handheld cameras going in for close-ups while garbled sounds murmur in the background – but when Warfare really gets to business, it’s undeniably effective. There’s a real sense of relief whenever the shooting stops, always then swiftly replaced with the dread of the next attack, all amplified by the inescapable, cramped confines of the house – by the end you can almost smell the dust and blood. A remarkable, even darkly funny, moment is the epitome of this when we cut over to the second squad, engaged in a frantic street-to-street gun battle, and they’re the ones having the easier time of it.
Performances are, somewhat inevitably, pretty mediocre across the board – there’s nothing to really grab on to for an actor here. Woon-A-Tai is merely functional in the lead, while Quinn and Jarvis spend the vast majority of their screentime screaming in pain on the floor as their mangled legs spray blood, while everyone else sort of blurs into one, all buzzcuts covered in dust. It makes it hard to truly *care*, beyond the essential thrills, about these guys – a fact really underscored by a baffling, self-defeating end credits sequence that tries to frame the squad as family.
In the grand scheme of things, Warfare doesn’t show us anything that plenty of other Iraq War movies and TV shows haven’t shown us before (for my money, Generation Kill remains easily the masterpiece American text of the conflict). Yet, in the immediate moment, it is easily thrilling enough to bypass this, earning your rapt attention and technical respect through sheer explosive fear and volume.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 