Going into “Warfare,” I wasn’t expecting much. Co-directed by Alex Garland and former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, the film is a recreation of a failed 2006 mission in Iraq. After being underwhelmed by Garland’s “Civil War,” a movie that tried to say something big that never quite landed, and being generally disinterested in war films as a genre, I went into “Warfare” with low expectations. I anticipated something overly stylized and propagandistic. Instead, I was met with a movie that stripped war cinema of its spectacle and propaganda, offering a brutal, immersive and devastating experience.
“Warfare” follows a team of Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission that rapidly spirals out of control.The film confines its world to a pair of Iraqi apartments seized by the SEALs. What unfolds is less of a narrative and more like a procedure, with the mission going awry, leaving the soldiers to survive a slow descent into chaos. The movie doesn’t offer exposition or a larger context. It offers no discussion of why the mission matters, who the enemy is — beyond the context that it takes place in Iraq — or why the U.S. is involved. This isn’t a flaw, it’s a statement. These soldiers don’t have time for philosophy, and neither does the film; it’s asking you to think of how you feel about the conflict.
That narrow lens is one of the strengths of “Warfare.” By focusing on the single botched operation, “Warfare” builds a rare kind of immersive tension. There is no narrative simplicity, and you don’t get a third-act twist with a triumphant ending where the enemies are killed. You get the confusion, waiting, exhaustion and pain that the characters experience. At times, the film is almost monotonous, with waiting, surveillance and whispered chatter over the comms, but within that, the tension builds. When violence erupts, it’s sudden and disorienting for the audience, like it is for the SEALs.
Still, that immediacy comes at a cost. The characters, while convincingly portrayed by an excellent ensemble cast including Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor and Joseph Quinn, are barely distinguishable from one another. We’re told nothing about them beyond their names and roles. Perhaps this is Garland’s vision: the movie is about how war and the military reduce individuals to roles, dissolving their identity under discipline and the chaos of conflict. I have to think it was unintentional, as it limits emotional investment in each character. When someone is injured, it’s treated as a roadblock to the mission instead of with humility. While it may be effective for the plot, it distances us from the soldiers.
Where “Warfare” truly excels is its technical execution. The sound design is among the best I’ve seen in recent memory. The crack of gunfire, the thunder of jets overhead, the sudden silence after an explosion — every sound feels real, pulling you deeper into the moment. “Warfare” lacks a score, a bold and practical choice to elevate the film’s rawness. Nothing guides your emotions or tells you how to feel. All we hear is the war’s environment, forcing us to sit with it like the SEALs.
Visually, “Warfare” is just as restrained. The camera rarely calls attention to itself. There are no stylized slow-motion shots, like in a Zack Snyder flick, or heroic military framing. Instead, the cinematography mirrors the film’s claustrophobic setting with its tight, handheld shots, often taken from uncomfortably close angles. As the situation deteriorates, the camerawork becomes shakier and more fragmented, but it refuses to look away. In particular, one street-level sequence with an IED explosion made me flinch, not because of the gore, but because of how it was shot. It feels less like a war movie and more like a memory of a soldier involved, clouded and muddled with the panic and sensory overload of warfare’s reality.
“Warfare” also refuses to assign meaning to itself, and there is something bold about its refusal. It doesn’t ask you to make conclusions about the Iraq War, nor does it glorify or vilify the soldiers. Conversely, the Iraqi civilians, whose apartments become the SEALs’ base, are barely present, with their forced silence becoming their statement. They are “collateral damage,” the war’s victims, silenced and sidelined just as they were in real life.
In the end, “Warfare” is not easy to watch with its violence and confusion, and it’s not meant to be. It doesn’t hold your hand. It doesn’t dramatize the conflict. It doesn’t even explain it. Instead, it traps you in a house with a group of scared, highly trained young men as everything falls apart around them, offering one of the most brutal experiences in recent cinematic memory. For a genre saturated with spectacle and propaganda, “Warfare” is a rare war film that says nothing and everything all at once.
