No Exit

Film: Warfare
Format: Streaming video from HBO on Fire!

I’ve been trying to post reviews about more current movies lately. If you look at what I have been posting in general, I’ve been watching movies from this year and last year, at least in terms of what I’m putting up as full reviews. Part of this is because I want to have a more or less consistent posting schedule, even if I don’t always keep to it. Part of it is also that it’s a sort of self-defense. The more I watch from these current years, the less gets added to the list later. So, today it was the turn of Warfare to be the film of the day. This is a film that comes from Alex Garland, so I was interested based on that going in.

The truth is that you have already seen this in large part. While the events of this film come from the experiences of the men who lived through this event. In fact, co-director Ray Mendoza is a survivor of the battle in question, and is one of the only characters in the film depicted with his actual name. Warfare is every bit a modern war movie, though. There is no tearful scene where some kid from Brooklyn talks about his girlfriend before being killed by an errant shot. This is brutal, and violent, and vicious. The issue is that there’s not a lot here that feels any different from Black Hawk Down.

The film takes place in 2006 following the battle of Ramadi in Iraq. A SEAL team takes control of a house while communications officer Ray Mendoza (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) calls in air support. Everything seems normal until a grenade is thrown into their sniper nest, causing confusion and chaos and injuring sniper Elliott Miller (Cosmo Jarvis). As the position comes under fire, things go from bad to worse. When the team attempts to be extracted, they are hit by an IED that kills a few people and wounds others. Worse, the team is now trapped completely, unable to move out.

And this is the entire movie. We see these troops handle moving under heavy fire, trying to evacuate themselves and their wounded, and dealing with constant attacks without let up. The comparison to Black Hawk Down is an obvious one specifically because what minor pieces of the plot exist are essentially identical.

It’s also an obvious comparison because the films have the same successes and the same problems. We don’t typically get combat depicted in this way. There are certainly films that do try to show combat realistically and succeed, but not at this length or intensity. This is essentially filmed in real time--Warfare runs about 90 minutes without the credits and takes place over a roughly 90-minute period.

It also feels suitably intense. There is no peace, no let up. Once the combat starts, it is constant. Gunfire, explosions, and the screams of wounded and dying men are the only soundtrack, and it is relentless. I don’t know what combat feels like. I don’t want to know what combat feels like, but I imagine it’s a lot like this—confusing, terrible, and terrifying. It also doesn’t shy away from the human cost—the lives of local people destroyed and the acres of damaged buildings.

But that’s also the weakness of the film. Once bullets start flying and everyone is covered in dust and dirt, it’s impossible to tell one character from another. When someone is wounded, can we tell which person it is? When someone is shouting into a radio, do we know who is doing it? It’s easy to become detached, something the film tries to overcome by giving us the constant story of Elliott Miller to keep us grounded in at least one character.

Warfare is a well-made and intense film. I’m not going to take that away from it. It’s also a film that feels like an assault on the senses. I appreciate how this was made—this is mead entirely from the recollections and memories of the men who actually lived this experience. The film does right by them, going through at the end and showing us pictures (often with faces blurred) of the real men who lived through this.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s a movie I want to watch again. It’s a hard film to recommend, but it’s also a film worth watching. That said, I think you can flip a coin between this and Black Hawk Down. The experiences are very similar.

Why to watch Warfare: Because war is hell.
Why not to watch: Have you seen Black Hawk Down? You’re good.