Warfare

A24's WARFARE 🪖 

Alex Garland is one of the few directors who has built up enough goodwill through his creative filmmaking endeavours that I can go in blind to one of his movies, not knowing the premise or who’s in it, and feel like I’ll always get my money’s worth.

In his latest film, WARFARE, Garland has teamed up with former US Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza to co-write a story about Mendoza’s true-to-life, lived experience from an isolated battle that took place during the 2006 Iraq War.

Unlike most of Garland’s movies, the writing takes a backseat to the visual and heart-pounding immersion that he’s crafted within a tight, confined strip of space. WARFARE is truly relentless in its realism, depicting the chaotic brutality of piercing bullets and brain-rattling explosives through an intimate, in-the-trenches recreation of a real-life story.

In many ways this is cut from the same cloth as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, where the battle feels so raw and real, but the lack of an emotionally compelling narrative makes both work better as sensory experiences than cinematic ones. Unlike Dunkirk, which sweeps you up into a larger-than-life story, WARFARE brings you directly into a visceral moment crafted from the memory of the men who lived through it. It’s a nightmare scenario of trying to evacuate an area that feels like it’s closing in on you. That entire setup and the way its shot makes you feel like you’re an active observer in what’s going on, in the most humbling of ways.

I respect WARFARE for being true to the tactical strategic side of how this would actually play out, even if it made the pacing of the film drag when executing those split-second-to-minute-long measures of communicating their attack and defence.

The only part that was lacking for me, which might work fine for others, is an emotional element in the story.

This is someone’s lived experience, so I don’t want to label its authenticity as simplicity, but I felt more engaged with this in a first-person shooter, Call of Duty video game way. In its defence, that may be what the intention was, and I may have enjoyed it in the exact way it was intended, in which case, round of applause.

Even though WARFARE may have sacrificed Alex Garland's ability to turn a great idea into a thought-provoking story, what he does in this in some ways supersedes that. He delivers a visually engaging, immersive experience that becomes an uncompromising and nerve-racking look at what soldiers go through in the trenches of battle. 

Enjoy!

6.1/10 🍿 🎥

Runtime: 1hr33mins

Where: In Theatres April 11th.

A24 Warfare Review (2025) The Richmond Reviewer - April 11th, 2025.

#Warfare #WarfareMovie #Movie #MovieReview #KitConnor #WillPoulter #CosmoJarvis #CharlesMelton #JosephQuinn #MichaelGandolfini #NoahCentineo #A24