Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza
Starring: D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini
Former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza acted as an advisor on
the combat sequences of writer/director Alex Garland's Civil War. Now Mendoza finds himself promoted to Garland's co-director
for Warfare, a re-enactment of a gruelling incident Mendoza experienced during the
American military's occupation of Iraq in 2006. Mendoza, then a
communications officer, found himself and his unit trapped in a building
surrounded by Iraqi resistance forces following the deadly detonation of
an IED. In something close to real time, Warfare details the perilous 90 minutes or so that Mendoza and his fellow
SEALS had to wait for reinforcements.
As re-enactments go, Warfare is positively slavish. Eschewing a traditional script, Garland
and Mendoza have constructed their film from the recollections of the
men involved, or at least the survivors. The goal here is realism, and
only those who have been in such situations can truly say whether that
goal has been realised, but it certainly appears realistic.
Garland and Mendoza's single-minded striving for realism comes at a
heavy cost however. The lack of traditional storytelling elements make
it difficult to engage with Warfare. It's somehow both immersive and distancing. Thanks to the close-up
handheld photography and sound design that will have you virtually
ducking for cover at points, it makes us feel like we're in the
situation with these young men. But at the same time it's difficult to
care about their plight. Half of the audience will be rooting for these
members of an invading force to get their comeuppance while the rest
will be blindly hooping and hollering for them to give those
fuzzy-wuzzies what for. But the men here are so anonymous and
uninteresting that it's difficult to imagine anyone becoming invested in
their plight, regardless of which side you're on.
We learn nothing about these soldiers, barely even their names, and
were they not played by recognisable actors like Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn and Cosmo Jarvis, it would be difficult to tell them
apart. We learn even less of the Iraqis, who are represented by a couple
of interpreters, the family whose home the Americans invade and faceless
goons seen only through the scope of a sniper's rifle. The people we
should care about in this scenario is the innocent family, but the movie
has no interest in their story.
Warfare's title is somewhat misleading, as it doesn't feature much in the way
of combat. This isn't two sides fighting one another, rather it's one
side waiting around to be rescued. It's much closer to a survival
thriller than a traditional war movie, as the stakes are centred around
whether these men will make it out alive, rather than whether they might
achieve their mission.
While it seems realistic, it doesn't feel any more realistic than the
visceral climaxes of Saving Private Ryan and Full Metal Jacket. But the great advantage those movies have over Warfare is that they utilise traditional storytelling techniques to
ensure we're invested when the bodies start hitting the ground, and
we've gotten to know the men involved by that point. With its anonymous
grunts who remain strangers to us throughout, the experience of Warfare is like watching the seventh episode of Band of Brothers if you haven't seen the first six. It's a film as pointless as
the conflict it depicts.
Warfare is in UK/ROI cinemas
from April 16th.
