'Warfare' Delivers in Authenticity
Alex Garland loves the military. Last year, he came out with Civil War, and now he is releasing Warfare. The movie isn't only directed by Garland, but also an Iraq war veteran who based the story on his war experience. Ray Mendoza and Garland make a great team. Together, they have constructed a compelling war movie that's highly authentic. If you were to ask what makes Warfare separate from other films about War, the answer is not much. But it is more original in terms of its authenticity. It's very similar to a Kathryn Bigelow film. It has the style of the Osama bin Laden raid scene from Zero Dark Thirty. The difference is if the raid lasted for the entirety of the film's length rather than a short scene.
Warfare has a 24-hour cycle structure to it. The story begins with the soldiers bonding together by watching a workout video, perverting over the female instructor's body. They're all male grunts who are straight as an arrow; they need something to pass the time. Next, we cut to 2006 Iraq. A platoon of the Navy Seals quietly enters a home in the dead of night. There's hardly any light making for some tension in the scene. It made me worried that someone would be open-fired upon. Luckily, no one is shot. There are no terrorists in the home. Just a traumatized family who lives there. The movie then cuts to the next day. The squad has a sniper setup and soldiers on both floors. They're waiting for the enemy to pop their heads up.
The first half of the movie is relatively quiet. There's not a lot of back-and-forth banter from the other soldiers, and the film is almost silent. The soldiers are on a mission; small talk could lead to a distraction. The noises we mostly hear are the clicking of rifles and the breathing of soldiers. The sound design and pacing are fantastic. Through the silence, we get the idea that something loud is going to break it, followed by a lot of blood. It's the calm before the storm. The deliberately slow pace, in the beginning, captures the dull aspect of Warfare. Most of the time, soldiers just wait. It's a lot of waiting and hurry up.
When the combat starts, the sound design switches gears. Unlike most war movies, where the music starts to kick in when things go ballistic, there's no score to the film at all. It's a cacophony of gunfire and screams. When one of the soldiers gets involved in a car blast, he has a Private Ryan moment where the sound goes silent. All the soldier can hear is the muffled, alarming wheezing in his breathing. When Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) gets his legs shredded, his screams of unbearable pain are petrifying. It makes me realize why I could never be brave enough to go to War. That type of pain I, along with most of the population, couldn't withstand. Elliott's pain humanizes him, making him not come off as yet another grunt but a human being whose agony is part of his bravery. Elliott refuses to die. His shouting is what's keeping him alive. There's no Sergeant Barns to tell Elliott to shut up and take the pain.
Another cinematic element that is impressive is how we never break from the point of view of the soldiers. We don't see the enemy. There are only minor glimpses of the terrorists from a sniper's scope and the moving, blinking light from an aircraft's perspective. The only Iraqis we really see are the family whose house has been occupied by unwelcome American soldiers. The film has a claustrophobic feeling where the soldiers are pinned in the house, needing to figure a way out.
Warfare relies on aesthetics over character development. If there's one gripe with the movie I had, it's that we never get to know who any of the soldiers are. Like Dunkirk, the film is more reliant on displaying the terror of war rather than spending downtime with its characters. Understandably, Mendoza and Garland aren't seeking a narrative that goes into everyone's back story. Warfare is simply about an event that's about survival and heroism over a traditional narrative. I understand wanting character development over what the film actually is might not be the best complaint. But it does make the film feel a bit shallow. It's hard to care about who's dying when you know very little about them. Warfare might not be one of the best military films ever made, but its overall 24-hour structure and thrilling aesthetics make for an impressive, disturbing thrill ride.
Warfare opens in theaters April 11
