Warfare

Rated R • Theaters

The late French filmmaker François Truffaut supposedly said that, “There’s no such thing as an anti-war film” because the film medium inherently glorifies the conflict and brotherhood of the men at arms, but in Warfare, co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza attempt to strike a delicate balance by being pro-soldier without being pro-war. They are only somewhat successful.

Mendoza is an Iraq War veteran, and he based the film—starring Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton—on his real-life experiences. The story follows a platoon of American Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission in insurgent Iraqi territory when things go wrong.

The film shines in its attention to detail. The dialogue, the character’s reactions, emotions, panic, and everything else, feel intimately real. The visuals are crisp: Tight close-ups on the soldiers’ faces let the audience feel what they feel, and wide shots give an objective, almost coldly impersonal, view of what’s going on. Every moment recreates what it’s like to be a soldier trapped behind enemy lines in a nightmare scenario.

But the movie struggles to make us care about the characters. The audience doesn’t get time to know the soldiers as individuals before the action starts. Moreover, there’s no discussion of what motivates them to fight, what the purpose of their mission is, and whether or not they believe in that mission.

This makes the movie feel awkward and sometimes disingenuous. It tells us to sympathize with and honor the soldiers we’re following. (A title card at the end praises the real-life brigade who “always answer the call,” and the credits show footage and pictures of the real-life soldiers with the actors who portray them.) And yet, because we don’t know the “why” behind their being here, they often feel like the bad guys. We first see them in action terrorizing a family who lives in the apartment they’re taking over as their outpost. We repeatedly cut back to that family in terror as the violence goes on. And when the soldiers finally leave, it’s the family we are left with, relieved that they’re finally gone.

Garland and Mendoza’s goal to glorify military servicemen without glorifying war is laudable, and their commitment to authenticity in the experience of conflict is first-rate. If they had only trusted their film to be anti-war without distancing us from the people behind the uniforms, the results could have been sublime.

The film contains profanity and scenes of graphic violence.