Warfare

 

This review may contain spoilers!

Warfare is a film that recounts the real life experiences of Ray Mendoza's Navy SEAL platoon, depicting a particular battle within Ramadi, Iraq during 2006.

This movie has an incredible sense of what modern warfare is. It presents us with a room filled with young men in fatigues dancing and cheering to a song as the first scene of the feature. These are our protagonists, a bunch of young partying men who don't seem much like fingers behind the triggers of heavy-duty assault weaponry. But that is who they are. For the next hour and a half, the film draws the audience into this extremely immersive experience, the extreme violence of war in a contained moment. We watch this band of soldiers from holding their position, ranging the street from their sniper's nest, right up until they are ambushed and start taking heavy casualties. The unique quality of Warfare is that once we start from the day of engagement, every moment feels like an actual measure of time. There is little time within the movie where we aren't running in sequence with how long a moment like this could actually play out. It's a very authentic film interms of grounding the experience, which is an impressive feat.

This is a technical masterpiece from Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland, who have really pulled out all of the stops to bring the audience into that full experience I mentioned earlier. I wouldn't normally speak to the sound design and editing but it is some of the very best I have heard so far in 2025. The variance in rounds fired from different weapons, to types of explosions and even the range of sound a soldier would or could hear in a moment is presented to us. The film is remarkably brutal to watch, with a real "do not look away" approach to the camerawork. I loved how the camera could switch seamlessly between a very static staged area to a sudden fluid tracking sequence as we spring into action. I even have to give a nod to the soundtrack here, that opening with 'Call On Me' by Eric Prydz is going to be playing in my head for weeks.

Joseph Quinn, who played Sam, runs pretty hotheaded which he seemed to have fun with; Quinn's performance hinged on portraying the horror of receiving a severe injury from an IED which he really went to town on. D'Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, who played Ray, is the role the audience gets to experience the most through; this is such a pivotal role played to maximum experiential effect. Michael Gandolfini, who played Lt. Macdonald, is one of the quirkier figures in the film; Gandolfini really played someone who was in over his head rather well. Will Poulter, who played Erik, holds massive presence at first as the commanding officer; Poulter also loses his composure after the IED attack and presents that loss of self well too. Kit Connor, who played Tommy, is a much softer and inexperienced presence than the others; Connor was the perfect pick to be the rookie amongst the crew. Taylor John Smith, who played Frank, really feels rock solid when first introduced and holds good chemistry with Jarvis; yet this is an interesting character to see lose his mettle a bit throughout the feature. Charles Melton, who played Jake, really comes into the film later and seizes control well; Melton leads the back half of the feature with tremendous presence. Rayhan Ali and Heider Ali, who played Falah and Sidar respectively, were very interesting characters to see on-screen; these allied Iraqi soldiers who presented fear well as they were treated essentially like fodder.

However, the best performance came from Cosmo Jarvis, who played Elliott. This is such an ensemble film, as the war genre typically tends to be, but Jarvis really stands out from the go. When we first really get to know this character he is perched atop this bed, running his sniper scope along an Iraqi street. Jarvis looks fatigued but intent, drenched in sweat but like a rock. He occasionally mumbles out a call or scratches something hurriedly into a notebook. He commands that room while he's holding it, and not even in this macho kind of way. Jarvis feels seasoned, he has a bit of a rougher, grittier edge to him that you respect. When he quips the word "weak" at the character, Frank, it feels Marine-coded. He is the first actor who has to convincingly react to being injured, and his initial portrayal of slipping into shock while holding the ability to push forward is very compelling. Even later on, Jarvis and Quinn are almost competing for the best portrayal of men grievously injured by an IED; for me it was Jarvis' portrayal that sold it.

To get critical about Warfare feels like you have to get a bit hard on the genre. This is a movie bannered with a title that might have well just called itself 'War'. Every single war film under the sun has this formula: start out with a slower pace with the soldier lads bonding and getting us a little emotionally invested, then a big battle or ambush happens and casualties begin and some of them get out of it. The end. This filmhas the unique pitch of trying to make us live in the time sequence of the the moment, but this really slows the pacing in a few moments where some urgency could have been maintained. This film is also an experience but it doesn't feel like a very well-rounded story. The protagonists almost entirely get away, the Iraqis world gets rocked...and that's kinda it. The film is a blip of a battle but there are barely any themes present, Warfare has little impression to impart of the audience other than a bleeding heart behind the scenes during the credits homaging the platoon. But this surface level commendation to the troops doesn't feel earnest or even particularly earned by the end.

This movie is almost a real home run from a technical lens, I just really hated the visual effects. The most glaringly awful effect was the one generated twice: the fighter jet that bombed the road. Nothing about this aircraft looked very real set against the backdrop at all, and it was such an eyesore I felt pulled out of the moment when it was used.

Adain Bradley, who played Sgt. Laerrus, is the only performer within the main platoon who I would describe as forgettable; Bradley has minimal unique interactions or character traits to make his role stand out from the crowd.

A technically stunning war film that will pull you deep into the carnage of an Iraqi skirmish and leave you feeling horrified. I would give Warfare a 7.5/10.