WARFARE Reviewed by GREG KING
Directors: Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland
Stars: Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Kit Connor, Taylor John Smith, Michael Gandolfini, Finn Bennett, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo.
War ravaged Iraq, November 2006. Alpha Team One, a squad of US Navy SEALs, was on a surveillance mission in Ramadi, an Iraqi town controlled by Al Qaeda. Their aim to observe an urban residential area which terrorists were suspected of using to plan their activities. The squad took up positions in a residential apartment block across from a small market and settled in.
The squad consisted of sniper Elliott Miller (Cosmo Jarvis, recently seen in the Australian prison drama Inside, etc) and his observer Frank (Taylor John Smith), and medic Sam (Joseph Quinn, from Gladiator 2, etc), who were situated in a bedroom on the second floor; communications expert Ray Mendoza (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, from the tv series Reservation Dogs, etc); gunner Tommy (Kit Connor, from Ready Player One, etc) is new to the squad; and squad leader Erik (Will Poulter, recently seen in the black comedy Death Of A Unicorn, etc) wears his mantle of authority uneasily.
But the seemingly straightforward mission went pear shaped when the unit came under heavy fire. Elliott is severely wounded, and the team calls for a medevac. Thus began a desperate fire fight for survival as they waited for rescue.
Warfare is a reenactment of that encounter, and is based on the experiences of Ray Mendoza, a former Gulf War veteran who has been a military advisor on a number of Hollywood action films since leaving the service. One of the films he worked on was Alex Garland’s Civil War. He and Garland became friends during that shoot and Mendoz shared his story of that November day. He and Garland co-wrote the script, aiming to make it as realistic as possible by drawing upon the memories of many of the platoon members. The script is sparse and stripped back into a tight 95 minutes. They have co-directed the film as well, with Mendoza drawing upon his own experience to shape the material and ensure it is as authentic as possible. The dialogue is heavily laden with military speak and jargon. Despite the intensity of the action, the pair were careful to ensure that the action was real and unvarnished and didn’t glorify war.
Visually and aurally Warfare immerses the audience in chaos and the sights and sounds of fierce, close quarters combat – the smell of blood, the agonised cry of badly wounded soldiers, the percussive sounds of bullets and explosives; the awesome sound of a US fighter plane. The soundscape and sound design is particularly effective here. The action sequences are not for the squeamish or faint of heart.
Cinematographer David J Thompson (The Hunger Games: Mockingbird, etc) uses handheld cameras to take us into the thick of the unrelenting action and the film is very claustrophobic and terrifyingly intense. Thompson uses a brownish colour scheme that is evocative of the heat and the tense atmosphere. Fin Oates’ precise and rapid editing adds to the overall effect of the action. Some of the prosthetics and makeup effects are also quite effective in depicting the wounds suffered by the soldiers. The deliberate lack of a music score also helps immerse the audience in the action.
Warfare is yet another example of that subgenre of combat porn – intense, harrowing and visceral depictions of war which we have seen with the D-Day landing sequence in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and films like Black Hawk Down, Lone Survivor, 13 Hours, 12 Strong, et al. But Warfare supposedly unfolds in real time which ramps up the sense of urgency and immediacy. The film was shot chronologically over a period of five weeks.
Most of the cast is relatively unknown so there are no showy heroics, but they acquit themselves admirably in the physically and emotionally demanding roles.
★★★☆
