Warfare (2025)
Directed by Ray Mendoza
A platoon of Navy SEALs embarks on a dangerous mission in Ramadi, Iraq, with the chaos and brotherhood of war retold through their memories of the event.
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What critics say influenced Warfare
As such, it’s the A24 version of a movie like Black Hawk Down…
…one wonders what differentiates this film from, say, Black Hawk Down, or Saving Private Ryan, or Hacksaw Ridge, or The Hurt Locker…
“Warfare” has the same relentless, unforgiving quality of modern war classics like “Black Hawk Down” and “The Hurt Locker,” but the scope is far more granular.
…audiences don’t leave the theatre with the same exhilarating enthusiasm as they did with Hollywood Blockbusters such as Black Hawk Down…
The reality of the situation elicits thoughts of other great war films- Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, all of which rank at the top, yet all three films are quite different.
…it serves as an honorable companion piece to Ridley Scott’s superlative Black Hawk Down in 2001…
Instead, Garland and Mendoza showcase the flavour of their roles in a similar fashion to how Ridley Scott shows off the crew of the Nostromo in Alien (1979) via their interactions whilst on duty.
It’s common to depict the grotesqueness of battle violence in war movies, such as the Omaha Beach fight in Saving Private Ryan.
Many films have tried to replicate that singular feel since the iconic, unbeaten D-Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan, but few have done so as well as this film…
…one wonders what differentiates this film from, say, Black Hawk Down, or Saving Private Ryan, or Hacksaw Ridge, or The Hurt Locker…
From Saving Private Ryan to Fury, Hollywood has tried to capture the horror of war, but few films have come as close to the raw realism, brutal intensity, and emotional nuance offered by 2025’s Warfare.
Case in point: Saving Private Ryan. It’s an excellent film, and it’s most certainly critical of war itself. But within its masterful story an effect is used to capture moments of, for lack of better term, shell shock: the sound cuts out, the imagery gets foggy, and everyone on screen is disoriented by whatever concussive bit of artillery just did its thing.
WARFARE is an intense, immersive experience of war that recalls the opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN but in this case, it is most of the film.
I suppose one could call this the anti-Hurt Locker.
…one wonders what differentiates this film from, say, Black Hawk Down, or Saving Private Ryan, or Hacksaw Ridge, or The Hurt Locker…
“Warfare” has the same relentless, unforgiving quality of modern war classics like “Black Hawk Down” and “The Hurt Locker,” but the scope is far more granular.
Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, in 2009…
I love and appreciate The Hurt Locker as much as anyone, as well as Zero Dark Thirty, and even Redacted.
It is this documentarian-like element which will probably prevent Warfare from having the cultural impact of a movie like Black Hawk Down or The Hurt Locker, or sure, pure propaganda like American Sniper.
I love and appreciate The Hurt Locker as much as anyone, as well as Zero Dark Thirty, and even Redacted.
…on par with how Full Metal Jacket exposed Vietnam…
Then came Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, or even Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which was based on real-life marine and later Vietnam War correspondent Gustav Hasford’s experiences.
…in much the same fashion as Stanley Kubrick did Vietnam in “Full Metal Jacket.”
We have characters to identify with - Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Pvt. Joker in Full Metal Jacket, Sgt. Elias in Platoon, to name a few.
Great ambiguous works (Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)) still have a strong philosophical core—they don’t just shrug.
The shot of the soldiers breaking through a wall to get into the family’s apartment is evocative of Jack Torrance shredding the bathroom door in The Shining, with the innocent victims screaming in terror as the invaders get closer.
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For example, American Sniper manufactured a Muslim threat for Bradley Cooper‘s portrayal of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.
This is not a commercial war movie in the vein of “American Sniper.”
It is this documentarian-like element which will probably prevent Warfare from having the cultural impact of a movie like Black Hawk Down or The Hurt Locker, or sure, pure propaganda like American Sniper.
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.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) is the first film that comes to mind when thinking of war films that defy their genre’s inherent exaltation.
The most powerful war movies—Apocalypse Now (1979), Come and See (1985), The Battle of Algiers (1966)—don’t just immerse us in chaos; they force us to confront the systems and ideologies that create it.
There was the initial salvo, a series of movies that ran the gamut from classics (Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter) to the movies that were decidedly not (The Green Berets).
…jingoist, nationalist Hollywood war films that depict Iraq as a third-world country and American veterans as heroes (like Act of Valor and Lone Survivor, which Mendoza worked on)…
…nor does it offer much in the way of the solemn patriotism of, say, Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor…
…(through his company, ‘War Office Productions’, Mendoza has also worked on Mark Wahlberg action films Mile 22 and Lone Survivor)…
Mendoza’s experience as a SEAL as well as military advisor for prior films such as Lone Survivor and Civil War goes a long way in terms of what you’re seeing onscreen.
Mendoza has had a successful career as a Military Advisor on films like Lone Survivor…
In some ways, it resembles Sam Mendes’ underappreciated Jarhead, capturing the boredom that can be a soldier’s life.
In its early, quieter moments, Warfare vaguely recalls Jarhead, Sam Mendes’ 2005 drama set during the 1989 Gulf War.
It is the way that Garland distinguishes himself from Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk” (2017) and Sam Mendes “1917” (2019) with the additional challenge of being set in the twenty-first century.
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Warfare is sure to frustrate those who found Civil War overly neutral in its political stance as it further pares away any notion of didacticism in the name of raw experience.
While “Warfare” shares the same brutal, unsavory visceral qualities of “Civil War,” it doesn’t rely on Garland’s aptitude for worldbuilding.
While Civil War felt timely and prophetic, Warfare leaves us wondering, “Why Iraq? Why now?”
Unlike Garland’s dystopian Civil War thriller a year ago—which took rightful flak for being grayly apolitical with its tremendously larger scope—being neutral here for Warfare is the correct stance.
In some respects, it’s a companion piece to 2024’s Civil War, and its making-of backstory is intrinsically linked to that film.
Unlike Garland’s dystopian Civil War thriller a year ago—which took rightful flak for being grayly apolitical with its tremendously larger scope—being apolitical here for Warfare is the correct stance.
Part of what makes Warfare so effective is how it plays (and sounds) like the kind of blunt, dread-filled horror movie the 28 Days Later screenwriter and Annihilation director made his name on.
Leave it to the director of Annihilation to make an environment scorched by explosives feel alien.
While Garland’s career behind the director’s desk started with the high-concept genre films “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation,” and “Men,” he pivoted towards realism with last year’s “Civil War,”…
…from Annihilation (2018) onward.
Annihilation (2018), an adaptation of the 2014 novel, was a critical success.
Then came Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, or even Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which was based on real-life marine and later Vietnam War correspondent Gustav Hasford’s experiences.
We have characters to identify with - Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan, Pvt. Joker in Full Metal Jacket, Sgt. Elias in Platoon, to name a few.
Then came Oliver Stone’s Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, or even Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which was based on real-life marine and later Vietnam War correspondent Gustav Hasford’s experiences.