Warfare (2025)
In some weeks in the 2020s, it's rare to find a single good movie for adults in one weekend. But on the weekend of April 11, 2025, there were three good movies aimed at adults: Drop, The Amateur, and the Iraq War thriller Warfare.
Co-directed by Civil War's Alex
Garland and Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza, Warfare is filmed mostly in
real time as a team of U.S. soldiers find themselves pinned down in an Iraqi
home in 2006. What follows is in some ways reminiscent of Ridley Scott's
excellent 2001 film Black Hawk Down.
The film's step-by-step process of how
the soldiers react to the attack and try to work their way out of their
situation always feels authentic. The sound design is fantastic (Oscar
nominations are deserved here for sound effects and sound effects editing). The
movie also emphasizes little details that other combat films often ignore. One
is that even if a soldier doesn't suffer a gaping wound from a nearby
explosion, the force of the blast is sometimes still enough to concuss a
person. In Warfare, two soldiers visibly suffer from the confusion and
disorientation of concussions while trying to figure out how to escape a building
under siege without dying.
The script also allows viewers to see
the havoc war wreaks on innocent civilians. The soldiers commandeer an Iraqi
family's house as an impromptu base at the start of the film. Over the course
of the next 90 minutes, the terrified family watches their house get shredded
to bits by bullets and shrapnel.
Warfare tries to capture the old
adage that war is boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. As a result,
the first 30 minutes of the film is pretty slow. It's easy to understand why
the filmmakers are staging it this way—there's a purpose to it—but the fact
remains viewers likely will get pretty restless during the opening stretch.
Overall, Warfare is compelling
and often harrowing viewing.
