Warfare Review: Combat drama pummels the senses but does nothing else

Warfare doesn’t let you breathe. Be it the restful or frenzied moments, Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s film softens punches at no point—battering, tossing and shaking you up without any reprieve. Following a platoon of Navy SEALs stationed in Iraq over the course of a day in November 2006, it’s a relentless cavalcade against the senses, blowing out meaning, rationality and coherence. Strategically de-personalizing characters you encounter, Garland and Mendoza state early that this film relies on “memories”. It’s the prism through which sensations of that day—seemingly fateful, yet, ultimately just another in a war—take blistering shape.

A thunderously visceral drama but also self-absorbed to a damaging degree, Warfare has one of the great build-up sections of the year. At night, snipers furtively move into an Iraqi house, demanding to set up base there for their operations. The silence of this sequence is penetrating. Throughout the film, this Iraqi family resurfaces only twice. Warfare wholly abstains from arcs, individual characterization or even a semblance of plot. There’s no concern here with conventional dramaturgy. It's more invested in going from a moment to another, loaded as they are in wartime. How do the soldiers navigate emotional reality when it's so abrupt and uncertain? For a fleeting instant, things seem stable, well-handled; in another, everything falls apart, bullets raining from all directions, the illusion of cover ripped away completely. What the film especially nails is the eerie, disconcerting quiet preceding a stormy shootout. The platoon has to be doubly sure and cement apprehensions before acting on them. However, this scenario also makes room for lots of delays and more footing to the enemy for mounting a full-blown offensive. It may just be too late for the SEALs to take decisive action.

Mendoza and Garland assemble a top-tier galley of young Hollywood: Charles Melton, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo. Kit Connor and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (playing Mendoza) leave the strongest impressions. The film is designed in group synergy, crucially delineating variations in gathering numbness. The actors blend together into a shared body and spirit, bound in looking out for each other, advancing even when stakes are high.

While Warfare is sensorially embedded, it is curiously distended from political implications. Is the absence of it the very point of the film—that these soldiers on ground can't be bothered about discourse and must maneuver without the baggage? Keep your eyes peeled on the target—don't blink or budge; tread with utmost caution. But of course, the sheer elision of politics can't be overlooked as beyond a motivation, especially when you add damning half-gestures like the Iraqi family’s awkward lurking presence.

Whenever this family emerges or the camera chooses to pan to them, it reveals nothing but tropey, trembling victimhood, begging for gentleness. "Why?" —one of their insistent demands for explanation momentarily cuts through the fog of violence but quickly fades. Soldiers have no answers. They simply don't have time to indulge and must rush for safety. With a political slant so glancing and retreating, the film provokes unease but also gradually opens up clues. What's the stance it's taking? You're nudged to look for it in seemingly small details, tied inextricably to surviving the moment. It's in the shadows of absolute panic that sweeps across the initially excited new recruit's face (Kit Connor), or stark denial of aid by their own country. The filmmaking is so ruthlessly energetic that it seems to be working hard to bury niggling questions. At this point of time, is it enough for a war film to just serve as a rigorously immersive mirror of such extraordinary circumstances? Surely, there must be other prerogatives?

Sensory details in Warfare are undeniably impressive, ratcheting up unbearable anxiety. You’re compelled to notice the beads of sweat threading the sniper’s neck as he’s locked in the same position for hours, atop a mattress, minutely scanning suspicious movements. “Peeking with serious intent to probe” —that’s the gist for aiming the weapon. Stitching gradations and intensity of sound—from nerve-shredding to muffled and the absolute, piercing quiet—Warfare orchestrates dread to stomach-coiling results. As soldiers stumble around in the utterly disorienting wake of an IED attack, tripping over mutilated body parts, shock hits and envelops in a tide. Nevertheless, a plunge into a dazed state can only sustain so long, when it’s not padded with more rounded intentionality. Bizarrely, the closing credits have an almost celebratory air, putting actors alongside the real-life soldiers, many blurred out. Yet, it's impossible not to be rubbed the wrong way. Even the makers interpose themselves, showing some of the staging. These aspects emphatically drive home the deep hollow at the center of Warfare—a spectacular exercise in carefully calibrated tension gone astray in thematic emptiness.