Film Reviews

‘Warfare’ Review: Alex Garland’s Band of Brothers is a Brutal Tale of Innocence Lost [B+]

Daniel Bayer March 28, 2025

It’s been said that war does not determine who is right, only who is left. Those with the moral high ground do not always win, nor do those with the best fighters. War only determines who is around to tell the story after the dust has settled and the victor emerges. Usually, this means that one should be wary of stories told about war, as they’re often clouded by received wisdom that isn’t necessarily accurate to what actually happened. In the case of Warfare, the new film from Alex Garland and his Civil War military supervisor, former U.S. Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, however, you should believe it. As the film’s opening onscreen text tells us, Warfare has been assembled from the memories of those that lived its harrowing true story: In 2006, a group of Navy SEALs found themselves under siege trying to get out of insurgent territory. Trapped in a civilian house seemingly surrounded by unseen gunmen, they must wait and hope for a rescue by their fellow countrymen after an IED explosion leaves them badly injured, both physically and psychologically. That’s the whole film, as Garland and Mendoza trap the audience right alongside these soldiers in a pressure cooker situation, only going outside this house via grainy satellite camera images of the surrounding area. This incredibly tight focus allows the filmmakers to make a bone-chillingly intense sensual assault of a film, one that forces the audience to walk a mile in the shoes of soldiers they have sent off to protect the world from evil, and ask themselves if the damage done to these boys is worth it.

This is a potent, important conversation to be having right now, both looking back on the Iraq War from the vantage point of two decades later and looking at the current state of the world. Battles raging in Ukraine and Gaza may not directly involve American soldiers yet, but in keeping things as generic as possible – mission details and character backstory are nowhere to be found – Warfare presents a snapshot of what modern warfare looks like irrespective of where it takes place or who it involves. What’s of utmost importance to Garland and Mendoza is not the hows and whys of this story, but the experience of actually living through the day-to-day. They capture that experience here through some jaw-droppingly incredible technical elements, in particular one of the best sound mixes of this century. Films have pulled the “cut to silence after an explosion then fade in the tinnitus tone” for decades now, but none have done so with half the effectiveness of Warfare. In a stunning sequence after their first rescue attempt gets thwarted by an IED explosion, sound comes back gradually, muffled at first and slowly gaining clarity as multiple layers of screams, gunfire, footsteps, and comms static get added, each part of a cacophony that steadily grows in intensity while still maintaining their own separate, distinct presence in the mix. The clarity of the sound mix in the midst of so much chaos makes it the easy standout on the film’s technical side, but every behind-the-scenes team here is working at the top of their game. David J. Thompson’s cinematography emphasizes the claustrophobic nature of the situation, closely framing the characters in starkly powerful images that won’t easily leave your brain. The gnarly prosthetics drive home the visceral pain the injured soldiers feel. Editor Fin Oates ensures the film’s forward momentum never lags, making as much order out of the chaos as possible. Meanwhile, the costume and production design teams do a fantastic job keeping the people and locations looking as anonymous as possible, in keeping with the overall message that this isn’t just representative of the war in Iraq, but all modern warfare..

As for the people that it happens to here, Garland and Mendoza have assembled a who’s who of hot young talent to play sketches of characters: Noah Centineo, Kit Connor, Michael Gandolfini, Cosmo Jarvis, Charles Melton, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and a dozen others of lesser mainstream renown. Given what they go through, you could say that the film takes an almost sadistic delight in stripping these young men of their “hot boy” status, but both the physical and emotional pain they endure is so visceral that there’s no delight to be found anywhere. Everyone gets at least one moment to make an impression, and most of them rise above the relatively thin material to give performances that affect emotional power. Poulter, as the commanding officer of the platoon awaiting extraction, makes his character’s complete loss of bearings in the second half palpable. The ultra-charismatic Melton, his counterpart on the extraction team, enters the film after the halfway point with the blunt force of a battering ram, taking control of the situation – and the film – and never letting go. Quinn manages to make a role mostly consisting of screams of pain compelling, as you watch him go through the stages of grief in real time after the explosion mangles his legs. Woon-A-Tai, playing Mendoza, is mostly reactionary, but as the film goes on and the full cost of war becomes ever clearer, he becomes more and more disillusioned even as he works as hard as he can to convince his brothers-in-arms that they will make it out of this hell. As much as there is any narrative thrust here beyond the immediate situation, it comes from Woon-A-Tai’s work around the edges of scenes, sneaking in a kind of coming-of-age story in the background of one of the most hellish “war is hell” films ever made.

Mendoza and Garland save their most radical work for the film’s edges. In addition to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it coming-of-age arc, they never lost sight of the civilians caught in the crossfire. The soldiers take over a civilian house as a base of operations in a sequence that emphasizes their aggression as they enter and search the house. Without any knowledge of their mission, it’s easy to think that they’re looking for a specific person, but that’s not the case. They picked the house for its strategic position, herded the family living there into one room, and while holding guns in their faces ordered them to be quiet and let them take over. Although neither the soldiers nor the family seem particularly hostile to each other, the tension between them bubbles underneath every scene. As we follow the soldiers around the house, reminders of the family’s presence fill the frame, whether it’s their actual bodies as they plead with the Navy translators to get the foreign soldiers out of their house, framed photos on the walls and shelves, or the curtains that only provide so much privacy. It’s impossible to forget that this is a family’s home that is being utilized as something completely antithetical to what it was built for, and as bullets, grenades, and smoke canisters start making their way inside, the film’s message asserts itself loud and clear: War isn’t just hell for the soldiers, it’s hell for everyone it touches.

In Warfare’s opening scene, the platoon gathers around a tiny screen and watches the music video for Eric Prydz’s “Call On Me.” Any number of bigger hits could have been used to place the film in the mid-2000s, but this particular music video, with its pulsing beats and sexually suggestive choreography, aligns with the amped-up energy audiences expect from modern war films. Based on that intro, you’d expect the film to be an almost American Sniper-like endorsement of American military might, but it’s not. After that opening scene, we see the stereotypical jingoistic, jarhead-y, “OORAH!” mentality make an appearance just once, in a character so obviously out of step with everything going on around them that multiple characters have to tell him to drop it and focus on actually helping their injured comrades. Mendoza and Garland want Warfare to represent war as experienced by real soldiers, and while the impressively oppressive sound mix does an incredible job of putting the audience right there alongside the characters, the bigger takeaway is how much the experience of war robs these young men of their innocence. The unfettered joy and good vibes of the camaraderie of that opening scene are but distant memories well before the film’s halfway point, replaced by the kind of physical pain and existential despair that should never burden people so young.

Many will try to make something of Warfare’s apolitical stance, citing the nameless, faceless Middle Eastern enemy combatants that surround our supposed heroes and the warm, brotherly-love vibes that permeate the end credits, which showcase the real-life veterans who worked on the film and their interactions with their Hollywood counterparts. Those people wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in their interpretation, either. But warfare isn’t always black and white, and Warfare isn’t, either. The film’s tight focus, while helpful in pushing the experiential, pressure-cooker aspects of the film, does leave it open to criticism that it only shares one side of this story. However, not even the characters that do have names and faces have much depth to them, and what little depth is present pushes the film closer to an anti-war message than a pro-war one. The action scenes may be nominally exciting in terms of how they capture the chaos of the moment and get your pulse racing, but given the horrific imagery and painfully raw emotions, it’s hard to imagine anyone actually being excited by them, at least on a level other than one of pure technical moviemaking.

Warfare does not glorify war, nor anything that the soldiers it depicts did. Through the unrelenting intensity of its presentation, the film forces the audience to sit and stew in the ugly reality of a soldier’s experience. The juiced-up jarhead mentality that drives many young men to join up will not help them when they’re actually in the thick of it; in fact, it may even be detrimental. To watch Warfare is to not just be a witness to the horrors of war, it is to watch a group of young men lose their innocence in a terrifying trial by fire from which none of them emerge unscarred. It is to be inside the nightmares that haunt every sleeping (and, in some cases, waking) hour of the countless soldiers who suffer from PTSD and know that there is nothing that can make them go away. It is also to be reminded that civilians just going about their lives can’t escape the horror, either, and that elevates Warfare above most other war films. Garland and Mendoza take great pains never to state their message outright, leaving each audience member to draw their own conclusions, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have one. Warfare may seem like a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, but that’s exactly the point.

Grade: B+

A24 will release Warfare only in theaters on April 11.

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Daniel Bayer

Daniel Bayer has been in love with movies all his life, in love with the theater since he could sit still, and in love with tap dance since seeing Singin' in the Rain at nine years old. A nationally-ranked dancer in his teens, his theater credits are many and varied, both behind and on the stage. He now spends his days as a non-profit database manager and the rest of his time seeing, writing about, and talking about movies and theater. He is a proud member of GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. You can find him on the AwardsWatch and Next Best Picture podcasts, and on Twitter @dancindanonfilm.