‘Warfare’ captures the chaos of battle with sound, sweat, and suspense.
By Dana Barbuto/Boston Movie News
“Warfare” doesn’t just depict combat—it traps you inside. Set during the Iraq War in 2006 and drawn from the memories of real-life Navy SEALs, the film reconstructs a mission gone sideways with granular precision and relentless tension. Ray Mendoza, who was on the mission, co-wrote and directed the film with Alex Garland (“Civil War,” “Annihilation”), offering a firsthand account of the events of Nov. 19.
The action unfolds in real time, with long takes and little exposition. From the moment the team gears up to the final medevac nearly 90 minutes later, the film sticks to the clock. When someone says the tank is six minutes out, it arrives six minutes later. In Ramadi, the SEALS take over an Iraqi family’s apartment building to surveil a suspected al-Qaeda hotspot. The mood is restless. There’s banter about “new guy energy.” One does pushups. Another pees in an empty bottle. Time stretches. Boredom ensues. And then everything erupts. At first, the suspense hinges on whether two wounded soldiers will be evacuated. Then it shifts—will any of them make it out alive?
“Warfare” thrives on sensory immersion but pulls back from everything else. There are no backstories, stirring speeches, or music cues to tell you how to feel. What distinguishes it from traditional combat films is its complete rejection of narrative comfort. The goal is to make you feel what it’s like to be under siege, not to guide you through it. That choice, though, comes at a cost. The filmmakers don’t engage with the material beyond the immediate chaos. There’s no character development, no acknowledgment of the decades-long history of U.S. involvement in Iraq, no sense of what this war means to those who fought it—or to the country that sent them. The film is so committed to realism that it ends up withholding perspective.
The sound design is unnerving. Static-laced radio calls, bursts of gunfire, disorienting echoes, high-frequency ringing—it all bleeds together, a mix of noise that mimics how chaos feels. You hear phrases like “threats peeking,” “blood sweep,” and “going hot,” but they don’t always register clearly. That disconnection is the point. The camera plows through the gunfights and grenades, through crawling evacuations, through moments where a decision—morphine or no morphine?—means life or death. You never settle in.
Will Poulter (“Detroit”) plays the officer in charge of the first team, with Charles Melton (“May December”) as the second wave’s leader. Joseph Quinn (“A Quiet Place: Day One”) and Michael Gandolfini (“The Many Saints of Newark”) round out the squad, along with others, including D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”) as Mendoza, the SEAL handling comms. Mendoza’s actions during the mission later earned him the Silver Star.
The film opens with a jolt of frivolity—Eric Prydz’s 2004 music video “Call on Me,” all spandex and hip thrusts. The camera pulls back to reveal a plywood hooch, with camo-clad guys watching bouncy blondes on a tiny screen. It’s a horny hype reel before the big fight.
“Warfare” doesn’t offer a political stance. There’s no neat resolution. At the center of the “narrative” is Cosmo Jarvis (“Shogun”) as Elliott Miller, whose memory of the battle was wiped out by trauma. Mendoza has said part of the reason for making the film was to help give that day back to him. Watching it in a theater full of veterans, the emotion in the room was impossible to miss. No one moved as the credits rolled and photos of the real-life SEALs appeared, their faces blurred out. Three days after the mission, the Alpha One SEAL team was back on the job. That fact isn’t in the movie. Including it might mean the filmmakers were taking a stand—acknowledging the cycle, not just the chaos. “Warfare” doesn’t go there. It leaves the war exactly where it found it.
‘Warfare’
Rating: R for intense war violence, bloody/grisly images, and language throughout.
Cast: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Adain Bradley, Noah Centineo, Evan Holtzman, Henrique Zaga, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton
Directors/writers: Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland
Running time: 95 minutes
Where to watch: In theaters on April 11
Grade: B
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