WARFARE (A24, R)

A story of terror and camaraderie, told in real-time, rattles the teeth and tenses the muscles.

I’ve seen my share of war movies. As someone deeply and nearly unilaterally opposed to the American war machine, I have a lot of reservations about films intended to glorify the nature of armed, escalated conflict. I love Saving Private Ryan, a movie highly skilled at illustrating how nasty and desperate the Second World War was. Jarhead and its investigation of the mental instability brought on by the proximity to conflict and its ability to leave you out of the action is a classic, even if slightly polarizing. Occasionally you get super introspective films focused on the horror of warfare. You get a Lone Survivor, a Brothers, a Full Metal Jacket. Movies content with showing the unglamorous, unclean, unfathomable realities of living through the closest approximation of hell we have. WARFARE isn’t just a movie, in this respect. The real-life account of writer Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who is featured in the film, and his squad as they attempt to manage a rapidly deteriorating situation, WARFARE is one of the most un-fun things I have ever watched.

The film opens with a group of SEALs watching a 90s workout video, getting hyped by the music and acting like goofballs. This is immediately followed by a nighttime insertion into a neighborhood in Iraq. The team enters a house, secures the family, moves upstairs only to discover it is a second apartment, sledgehammers the wall down, secures the tenants of that floor, and then sets up shop. The next day starts in the afternoon and plays through, for the rest of the movie, in real-time. Every minute is real, every second is real. What starts, ostensibly as a surveillance op, quickly goes very pear shaped. You then watch for roughly 90 minutes as a group of SEALs try desperately to get the fuck out of the situation they are in.

The thing I caught myself doing the most in this film, because of the copious amounts of violence- and war-focused media I have consumed, was waiting for the “big moment.” The moment something terrible happens and pushes the plot into the next phase. I was constantly waiting for someone to get shot, for some explosive munition to punch a hole in the wall of their house and cause them to relocate, for the SEALs to make some heroic movement to clear the houses of assailants. WARFARE is not this movie. Instead, because of its perspective being restricted only to what the SEALs who were there remembered, it's a film full of fear and unanswered questions. You never really know how many people are attacking them. You never have a good idea of where they are. There isn’t a John Wick moment of close quarters combat, ending in a victorious hero, bloodied by the conflict. In its place you have a dozen scared young men, surrounded, standing over their deeply wounded comrades, desperate for a solution to a problem increasingly leaning towards their demise.

To execute the fear and impact required to tell this story, co-directors and co-writers Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza muster an impressive array of aural and visual stimuli. Every gunshot is startling, explosions wash out sound and assault you with low end and high end ringing, the screams of the wounded grind on your nerves. The constant radio chatter of conflict becomes a weapon of its own, stinging your eardrums and overloading your ability to keep track of what’s really happening. And this is just for you as a viewer. The people you're watching on screen are dealing with all of these things and are forced to maintain some level of readiness through it all. Concussed, dusty, bloodied, adrenaline fueled, confused, scared soldiers, clawing for freedom. You watch people go into shock, you see the progressive terror of catastrophic wounds, all while the sound design and pace give you no respite.

I could not possibly describe the experience of this film as fun. It’s a remarkable recreation of trauma and chaos. Mendoza wrote the film and sought to have it made for his buddy Elliot, a soldier wounded in the events of the movie. Because of the extent of Elliot’s injuries his memory of the events portrayed in the film are either fuzzy or completely absent. As an act of service and love to a dear friend who has experienced a trauma he can't place, this movie is an incredible achievement. But precisely for this reason, I firmly believe the intent of this movie is not entertainment. It’s an eye opening experience. You will question the involvement of the SEALs and our government as the movie's tension escalates. Nothing here is accomplished. No objectives are checked off. No targets eliminated. It’s simply a tricky situation going bad, getting worse, and then being prolonged by logistical challenges.

I think a lot of people need to see this movie. I think I am going to have a hard time selling it to most people I know. But the merit of a movie told by the men who were there, portrayed in as real a method as possible, is hard to quantify. And I understand the naivety of hoping minds will be changed after watching this movie. Some will, perhaps, but people are stubborn creatures, and movie theaters aren’t the houses of enlightenment I might hope they are. Regardless, Warfare is a nerve wracking, painful, terrifying, anxiety inducing slow walk through hell. Its message of camaraderie rings loud and clear. Its illustration of war as a messy, cloudy, chaotic mess is evocative and startling. Everyone should have to watch this. It feels like what I would imagine setting a broken bone might feel like. Traumatic but, in the end, necessary.

~Caleb

@lubwub