Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Warfare’ on VOD, a Horrifically Authentic Snapshot of the Iraq War

Warfare (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) finds filmmaker Alex Garland taking another step away from the science fiction stories that have defined his career. This new A24 movie stems from the production of Garland’s 2024 disturbingly plausible speculative-fiction outing Civil War, for which he hired Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL and Iraq War veteran, as a military advisor (he had similar credits for other films, including Jurassic World and Lone Survivor). Garland and Mendoza subsequently conceived Warfare, co-writing and -directing a story based on a harrowing incident Mendoza and his SEAL team endured in 2006 during the Battle of Ramadi. The final result is one of the most brutally intense cinematic depictions of military conflict you’ll likely ever see.

WARFARE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We meet SEAL team Alpha One as the unit hoots and hollers at a provocative music video. It’s a bonding moment. They’re laughing and pumping their fists and geared up and ready to go – helmets, flak jackets, goggles, guns. Then, a hard cut to a pre-dawn setting: a tranquil Ramadi street. The camera sits still, contemplating the scene. Slowly, silently, Alpha One creeps up the road. Nods, hand signals, a jokey pantomime of sexy moves from the music video. They scale a concrete wall, open a gate, enter a home, awaken the residents. The SEALs break down a brick wall into a second apartment upstairs and shuttle the scared people, including children, into a bedroom.

The SEALs set up shop for an unspoken mission – or if it is spoken, it’s lost to us civilians amidst dense procedural military chatter. But it soon becomes clear that they’re monitoring a building that could be an enemy stronghold. Among the men are Alpha One leader Erik (Will Poulter), communications specialist Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), “new guy” gunner Tommy (Kit Connor) and a handful of others, including a pair of Iraqi translators who have combat training. Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) and Frank (Taylor John Smith) are snipers, situated upstairs, watching a cafe across the street through a rifle scope, noting any suspicious-looking men. Long, dull moments of silence pass. The crosshairs sweep past children and other passersby, lingering on a man in track pants, and another in a headscarf. Frank asks if they’re “peeking” or “probing” the SEALs’ location. “Peeking with serious intent to probe,” Elliott replies.

They’re definitely probing: Soon, more men arrive, some of them armed. People begin to clear the sidewalks as a call to arms plays over a PA. Not good. “Looks like they’re getting their jihad on,” quips one of the SEALs. A grenade plunks into the upstairs room, its explosion stunning Elliott, Frank and Tommy. They gather their wits and retreat downstairs and Ray calls for extraction and a tank arrives and they toss a smoke grenade for cover and as they hustle to the tank a bomb goes off. A greenish haze lingers in the air as the SEALs regain their wits, slowly. All sounds are muted. One of the translators lies in the road, his upper half intact, his lower half in scattered bits. Two SEALS are gruesomely injured. Ray and others shake off the cobwebs and drag the wounded men back into the house, Sam (Joseph Quinn) screaming in pain and Elliott with horribly mangled legs and appearing to be dead. This mission went to hell. Whether they can escape from hell is the question.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Warfare is likely to stand next to The Hurt Locker as the definitive depictions of the Iraq War – although it ultimately has more in common stylistically with the grueling battle sequences in Saving Private Ryan and Full Metal Jacket, and tonally with a heavily procedural film like Zero Dark Thirty.

Performance Worth Watching: Although Poulter, Charles Melton and Michael Gandolfini are the high-profile members of this large ensemble, it’s Reservation Dogs Emmy nominee Woon-A-Tai who’s prime for a breakout

Memorable Dialogue: “Who’s ‘the severely wounded’? Is it me?” – Sam

Sex and Skin: None.

Photo: Murray Close /© A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

Our Take: Warfare absolutely and unquestionably plays out in the fog of war, sometimes literally. Why, exactly, these men are in this particular place on this particular day is never made clear, and is illustrative of the big question about the Iraq War: Why are we here? It seems like a provocation backed with no satisfactory logic. 

That vague almost-metaphor is about as political as Mendoza and Garland get. Otherwise, they stick with the nuts and bolts of the mission and the authenticity of the moment. The dialogue is either impenetrably specific in its procedural jargon or guttural expressions of pain and fear. It’s silence, then violence. Some will grouse that it isn’t political enough or ensconced in the contextual discourse pushing back against an unjustified conflict, that it’s too stripped-down to tell a complete story and therefore reiterates war-is-hell-isms we’ve seen in many prior films. But frankly, that’s shortsighted; we’ve been over and over that in many prior films as well. Warfare justifies itself by building a story – notably about rescuees rather than rescuers, subverting a common movie trope – upon the granular details of this time and place, and depicts the horrors of war with such intensity and realism, its relevance is self-evident. 

Presented with an end-credits tribute to the men Mendoza served with – here layered with a thin veneer of fiction – the film strives for authenticity and bullseyes it. Garland and Mendoza’s direction (Garland stated that his role was more “supportive” than leading) is highly technical and balanced with base-level terror, a combination rendering the film’s immediacy undeniable. There’s no rah-rah comradeship or cliches to be found here, just a real-time snapshot of men doing difficult jobs that might destroy them outright. And if that doesn’t happen, they’ll live to question the necessity, their motives, the world that put them there. But nobody thinks about that in the moment, when procedure and survival rush to the forefront along with the adrenaline and all-consuming fear.

Our Call: Warfare is as it says on the box. Far from an “entertaining” portrayal of violence – and definitely a difficult watch – it’s an honest, shrewdly constructed and essential modern-war film. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.