When Stanley Kubrick released Full Metal Jacket, one of the most common criticisms was that it was so bifurcated that it felt like he’d glued two scripts together. The first half was a military training movie about how armies dehumanize recruits. The other was a gruelingly accurate depiction of a firefight, informed by the experiences of veterans.
Warfare, the latest film from Civil War director Alex Garland, is basically just the second half of Full Metal Jacket, updated and executed with that same level of brutal, blood-splattered accuracy.
Those details are provided by Garland’s co-writer and co-director Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL. The duo based the script on Mendoza and his platoon mates’ recollections of one 2006 operation in Ramadi during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, recounted mostly in real time.
As such, the Iraqis become background characters, whether they be civilians or combatants. Indeed, the only ones who are given even glimpses of rounded characterization are the two Iraqi soldiers assigned to the American unit as translators.
There’s a horrific ambiguity about why the squad is there, and they seem disinterested. Pumped up from watching the music video to Eric Prydz’s 2004 club hit “Call on Me,” they break into a house in Iraq at night, and establish a base. They shove the families living there into a bedroom, knock holes in walls, and wait. For what? Inevitable violence.
Warfare’s recreation of combat is extraordinary, as is how it subtly debunks all the conventions and cliches of the genre. If it all feels familiar, it’s because nothing’s really changed. That opening sequence of the soldiers freaking out over the music video, all cleavage and crotches barely contained in leotards, is no different to soldiers in a Sam Fuller movie leering over a girly magazine, or the Playboy Bunnies in Apocalypse Now. As they take fire and fire back, unsure whether they’ve hit anything, it all seems so oddly mundane.
The squad are almost indistinguishable from each other because they are so delicately shaded. After all, Garland and Mendoza are portraying real people, all of whom have been through the same training and are there for the same reason – to look after each other. They’re inevitably going to fail, and how they handle that is how they become defined. There’s no weakness or heroism, because they’re all dodging bullets or getting cramps from looking down a sniper scope for too long. Individual performances undoubtedly emerge, most especially Will Poulter (Death of a Unicorn, Midsommar) and Joseph Quinn (A Quiet Place: Day One, Stranger Things), but this is an impressive ensemble, where each has a part to play. Most importantly, for all the sturm und drang of the action, there’s something workmanlike about what they’re doing. Even the onscreen Mendoza (Reservation Dogs’ Woon-A-Tai) is depicted with suitable restraint, making mistakes under pressure and quivering just as much as anyone when a grenade goes off.
A nihilist streak runs through Warfare, a subtle sense of despair about the detached pointlessness of the entire experience. When the dust settles, all that is achieved is damage: physical, emotional, material. There’s a shock-and-awe level of munitions fired, and when they hit the impact is devastating, but there are nods as to how near-misses are also devastating: The whole film is a diagnosis guide for CTE, deafness, and PTSD.
There’s a repeated image of a low-flying fighter kicking up dust and debris, and after the first time it does nothing to resolve the conflict, the question is obvious: Why do it? Why do any of this? Warfare obscures its anti-war sentiments in the fog of war and the romance of oorah camaraderie – sometimes too effectively. Audiences wanting a more rounded discussion of the U.S. occupation of Iraq might find it too militaristic and Americentric, while flagwavers wanting raw jingoism may find its questioning too probing. But as a depiction of the futility of conflict from those who fought, Warfare is far from ambivalent.
This article appears in April 11 • 2025.
