Warfare Is Raw, Intense, and Cinematically Amazing

            Alex Garland has only directed five movies in his career, but of the five, I have given one the high praise of five stars, three have been given four and a half stars, and my lowest ranked film of his I gave three and a half stars, which is still really good. Last year, he came out with Civil War, which I think was a top five movie of the year despite it not receiving any awards love, and after that movie came out he announced that he was done directing for the time being, which I found to be an incredibly depressing announcement, because he has made a couple of my favorite movies, so I was beyond excited when a year later, his name was back on the screen as a director for Warfare, but he was sharing the duties with a veteran, Ray Mendoza, and they told quite the story.

            Warfare is the true story of a group of Navy SEALs doing a mission in Iraq. The details of the mission are not explicitly mentioned but based on what is going on in the movie, it is a mission to gather intel. The group breaks into a civilian’s house in the middle of the night and commandeers it. It is a two-level house, so they have two couples and two children that are held in the house for the duration of the film. When morning comes, they are observing activity at the buildings off in the distance. They have a sniper using a scope to keep track of activity, and they have noted that multiple people keep eyeing their location, which makes them uneasy. Then an announcement is played over the town speaker, and warfare breaks out.

            It starts with an unexpected grenade in their window, and then gunfire breaks out. The grenade only injured one of their soldiers, but it was enough for them to request a medevac for the guy. So a tank was sent to get him. While they are waiting for the tank to come, they break down their camp, and make sure they have all of their gear, and make their way downstairs. The tank is able to make it through the fighting, and it arrives at their location, and as they are about to load the injured man onto the back, an explosive goes off or a grenade is launched, and a massive explosion occurs thus wrecking total havoc on the whole thing, and the movie continually gets more intense from there.

            Alex Garland films movies in a way in which I love, and the shots after the explosion are incredible and seared into my memory. The first one was from the inside of the tank. The door was open when the explosive went off, and now the view from inside was drenched in smoke, and it was all tinted yellow. It was a beautiful shot despite the destruction it was conveying, which I think he does well in all his films. Then it shifts perspectives, and it shows what others are going through that are strewn along the ground in different places from the power of the explosion.

            This is where Garland’s other talent really shows itself, the sound. There is so much time spent in this movie in silence, and that only helps to add to the tension that is constantly building, but it also makes the sound much more violent when it occurs. So the explosion itself was the biggest jump scare of the year. I think I left my seat when it happened, it caught me so off guard. Then it was just silent. Until there was a low ringing thus mimicking the hearing loss that would occur after being in close proximity to such a large explosion, and it stays quiet like that for what feels like minutes as the soldiers are slowly able to move around again, but there are two soldiers that suffered severe leg wounds, and they get dragged back into the house, and when one crosses the threshold of the house, the sound kicks back in with full force as the guy is screaming in agony at the top of his lungs, which was also almost a jump scare in itself. The sound of guns and explosions is also incomparable to any other movie, except for Civil War.  

            Another great part of the movie was the cast. It was truly a whole ensemble effort, and they all did great. There are a couple of recognizable names in the cast like Will Polter, Noah Centineo, and D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, but the rest just seemed like dudes, but they all felt perfect for this. Out of all of them, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai was the standout performer to me, and he was playing Ray Mendoza’s role, the other director. The camera always seemed to find its way back to him, and he was constantly relaying emotion. He became famous from Reservation Dogs, an incredible show that was on Hulu that I highly recommend watching, and he was in the slasher Hell of a Summer, which came out last weekend, and it was a great time at the theater, so it is great to see him being in more media than just Reservation Dogs.

            One aspect that I felt like separated this from other war films was the rawness of it. Their emotions were all worn on their sleeves, and there were not too many of them that seemed too confident once the fighting broke out. Many of them seemed nervous, but it never prevented them from doing what needed to be done. If one of them was asked to step up, they did. The rawness can also be seen in the violence.

            Some of the visuals were brutal, especially after the explosion, there was a body that was severed in half that was shown multiple times, and there was a leg just sitting in the middle of the road, and worst of all was when they were dragging one of the guys into the house with an injured leg, and the leg gets caught on the side of the wall, and when he pulls on it, it just looks like it is about to tear off. It made me cringe in my seat. It was hard to watch, and there were just streaks of blood on the floor in the house from where the injured soldiers had been dragged. It looked like something that would be seen in a horror movie. Again, the sound effects were also very realistic, and the set looked great.

            The end of the movie did differ from other war movies, instead of leaving with the surviving soldiers, the camera stayed, and it focused on the family that was left. It was their house that was taken over, and their house where acts of war were occurring. The home was wrecked, and they had nothing to do with the conflict, and at the end of the day, it seemed like nothing was accomplished. There were some casualties, but it does not seem like any meaningful data was collected, no high-level targets were apprehended, and the they lost one man and others were severely hurt. It all seemed pointless and hurtful to so many, including those that had nothing to do with it, which is a powerful message to send.

            This is by far the best movie of the year so far. It is soaked in tension from start to finish. It had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. The cinematography and sound were incredible, and if it was playing in IMAX near me, I definitely would have seen it there, but either way, I will be back to see it again (I went back today and sat in the front row). It was only 90 minutes, and it both flew by and felt like it took forever, and I do not mean that in a negative way. When something bad is happening, it made me so on edge that it felt like the scene would slow down. The amazing thing is that Garland said that most of these shots were done in one or two takes due to their limited time and budget. It never ceases to amaze me how movies like this and The Brutalist end up looking so much better than the films that are granted hundreds of millions of dollars. I highly recommend going to see this in theaters, and take your dad too, I guarantee he will like it too! 4.5 Stars