Movie Review: WARFARE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 11th, 2025 / 01:01 AM

Rating: R
Stars: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Aaron Mackenzie, Alex Brockdorff, Finn Bennett, Evan Holtzman, Michael Gandolfini, Joe Macaulay, Laurie Duncan, Jake Lampert, Aaron Deakins, Henrique Zaga, Kit Connor, Noah Centineo, Taylor John Smith, Adain Bradley, Charles Melton, Tom Dunne, Rayhan Ali, Heider Ali, Sima Pollitt, Nathan Altai, Aso Sherabayani, Amira Dutton, Donya Hussen, Inbal Amram
Writers: Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland
Directors: Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland
Distributor: A24
Release Date: April 11, 2025

The phrase describing war as “long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror” is said to date back to World War I. In the case of the film WARFARE, this might be amended to “long periods of sheer terror.”

Directed & scripted by Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland, WARFARE is a dramatization of the experiences of a Navy SEAL team in Ramadi, Iraq, on November 19, 2006. It is based on interviews with surviving unit members.

We are in a suburban Iraqi neighborhood. The SEAL team commandeers a multi-level house that is home to two families with children. The residents are, so far as both we and the SEAL team can determine, wholly innocent. They just happen to have the bad luck to live in a space that offers a good view of the street.

For about half an hour of screen time, we watch and wait as the team and their translators try to figure out what, if anything, may be going on outside. The unit’s primary sniper, Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis), is stuck, unmoving, looking out a window in one position for so long that he starts to get cramps.

A call goes out over the neighborhood loudspeaker system (these are common in Muslim-majority countries, as they broadcast the calls to prayer) urging men to rise up against the Americans. Some locals notice the sniper’s gun in the window.

Then, abruptly, violence erupts. It is as chaotic, loud, frightening and disorienting as is imaginable. We are impressed at the team’s ability to maintain any kind of coherent reaction and chain of command, and their courage as the danger escalates.

We also see and comprehend how observational drones are used, the difficulty in evacuating wounded soldiers during battle, and the horrific severity of those wounds.

There is no sense of righteousness, only of the men’s (they are all men here) dedication to one another and their commitment to their jobs.

The acting is nuanced, contained and naturalistic. The dialogue likewise sounds like what we would expect to hear in these circumstances.

In short, WARFARE seems to be (at least, from the point of view of a reviewer who has never been in combat) an extremely realistic depiction of the title phenomenon.

As a movie, however, WARFARE puts us at a disadvantage in some ways. Unlike the SEAL team members, who clearly share a bond, we have no idea who these guys are at the start, and little more notion of this at the finish. We see what war does to them, but we have no visceral sense of them as human beings.

Also, inasmuch as we readily empathize with anyone, we feel for the civilians whose households are taken over by the team. We see footage of many of the real SEALs with their onscreen counterparts in the closing credits; it would be good to know what happened to the families.

WARFARE captures the sights, sounds and shocks of battle with verisimilitude. Those watching in IMAX will even be physically shaken by the impact of artillery. But because we never get to know anyone, it’s hard to come away with anything lasting except an affirmation that war is hell.

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A realistic depiction of the title phenomenon

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