Fresh off 2024’s Civil War, Alex Garland returns to thematically familiar territory (and an overall more successful outing) with Warfare. “Visceral” and “effective” are two words that aptly describe the filmmaking prowess of Warfare – an impressive display of craft, though narratively, less so.
In the sprawling canon of war films, we have seen plenty of army-on-army fighting, grand in scope and a focus on cinematic spectacle. One of the powers of Warfare is how self-contained the story is, making way for a tighter view of both the heroism and horrors of the Iraq war. Shooting the film as real-time was a good choice, with the suspense and feeling of dread building gradually. Some people may take issue with how unsensational the story they decided to tell in Warfare is, but I think this is a feature, not a bug.
Warfare easily has some of the best sound design and mixing I have experienced in a long time; it is in large part what makes this movie so effective. Every bullet shot, every breath taken, every comms transmission – it pulls the viewer deeper into the experience. In one tense scene, the volume of the comms on the radio gradually becomes louder and louder that it becomes deafening and disorienting in the theater, mirroring the character’s own overwhelm and everyone’s subsequent relief when he shuts it off. There are countless moments in Warfare, where the technical aspects of the filmmaking create an equivalent sensory experience in the theater. I believe the lack of character development was intentional. Instead we get archetypes: Will Poulter as the troop leader, Kit Conner the frazzled newbie, Cosmo Jarvis the tough guy…Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, the list goes on.
This distance and detachment from character makes the onscreen horror more objective in my opinion; the film does a careful job not creating conditions in which you’re rooting for anyone. Warfare, to me, did not feel like a film that veered into glorifying the American military.
After a few misses in Men and Civil War, Alex Garland is back in my good graces with strangely, his most grounded affair. Warfare really did deliver.
