Warfare is the new Alex Garland movie that takes place in a single street in the Iraq war. A group of American soldiers find themselves pinned down in an house by unknown fighters when they take a single location – what should have been a normal surveillance mission goes wrong and they have to evacuate with heavily wounded soldiers. It’s tense, a boots on the ground story that has echoes of Black Hawk Down more than American Sniper, taking a ‘war is bad’ story and focusing on the characters whose lives go through hell. They’re worried about every conflict, they’re human, they’re people. We never really get to see more than that, but we know just about enough.
Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland work together here for a droning nightmare-fuel that’s tense from start to finish – not a flashback to American families at home, not any attempt at getting to know these guys more than what Garland and Mendoza want you to know – there’s an opener where we get to witness them watching a dance video; and then it’s all gung-ho from there – questions asked but none given, tense warfare at the smallest level. It’s Black Hawk Down from the director of Annihilation and Civil War, one of the masters of auteur filmmaking. It’s a recreation of a 2006 Navy SEAL operation where they take ahold of a small village but the film instead feels like a Call of Duty mission at times more than a film – action-packed, guns-blazing – you go through all the checkpoints like you would in a boxed in video game.
Sympathies lie with the Iraq innocents more than the American soldiers – a pleading, desperate civilian asks them “Why?” hauntingly when they leave her home a ruined mess. That scene in particular stays with me longer than any focus on the Americans, who volunteered to kill. I like that it does avoid these characters being shown as heroes – they dream of being it; only to end up a wreck by the end, but at the end of the day, it’s their choice – and they can’t be heroes for anyone.
It largely amounts to ninety minutes of nothing and the enemy gets so dehumanised to the point that they’re non-existent NPCs. There is no structure or anchor to the storytelling and the scenes of the characters getting injured feels more for shock value than character growth – that would be novel but we’ve seen it before. Where did Alex Garland go?
I liked Civil War, I’m one of its defenders. I didn’t hate this – I think the bleak tenseness of it all makes it an uncompromising, unrelenting watch – but did I love it? No. Garland’s made much rawer works in the past – and makes the most out of excellent sound design, which is easily the best thing here – but what makes Warfare weak is its inability to commit to the bit about these guys not being heroes – it could’ve humanised the Iraqi population more, could’ve highlighted that no WMDs were found, could’ve and should’ve taken more risks.
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