As someone who typically sees three to four movies a week in the theaters, I've rarely ran into moments where the crowd is completely silent. Normally there is someone whispering, digging their hand into their popcorn container, or shifting in their seats. During the new movie Warfare, there was a 25-30 minute stretch where everyone in the theater seemed to be completely silent. You could hear every gunshot, every grunt of pain, and every scream of terror echo throughout the theater in a way I haven't seen during a wartime flick in years.
Showcasing the brutality of war has been happening within cinema for decades, and A24's Warfare takes it up a notch in a way that'll leave squeamish people closing their eyes. Although the focus of the movie is on a small plot of land, we see severed limbs, endless gushes of blood, and demands for morphine that showcase the true pain someone can go through during a war.
The movie follows a Navy Seal Team who takes over a house in Ramadi during the Iraq War. Leading up to the takeover, we get introduced to several of the main characters including Ray (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Erik (Will Poulter), Elliot (Cosmo Jarvis), Sam (Joseph Quinn), Jake (Charles Melton), and Frank (Taylor John Smith) as they cheer, dance, and showcase the bond that soldiers quickly develop.
The introduction to these guys gives the idea that this movie will have humorous and light-hearted moments, but this is a complete ruse on the audience, as the brutality sets in quickly after they complete their takeover of the home. The good news is that each member of the cast is a standout in their own individual way, and it showcases the talents of this fairly young and upcoming group.
You get the sense that if the same cast was featured in this type of movie during the 80's or 90's, their posters would be all over college dorm rooms. This is a movie that doesn't hold back and although the crew originally gives off frat-pack vibes, the movie quickly jump into themes such as mental health, the long-term effects of being in war-time conditions, and the fear of losing the person beside you.
As the Seals deal with an ambush from local Iraqi soldiers, the audience is thrown into a whirlwind of emotions overranging from fear to disgust to hope. Directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland handle this rollercoaster ride extremely well and make us invest in each of the soldiers even without knowing their backstory or who they truly are as people.
Woon-A-Tai and Poulter both showcase a range of confidence and fear rarely seen in these movies, and it helps remind the audience that most soldiers are college-aged when they go into a warzone. Watching both characters question their decisions and slowly break down as the movie progresses is painful and you can only imagine what the real soldiers were thinking and saying to each other as the events unfolded.
The movie also avoids utilizing cheap tricks to make us care about the characters, and it doesn't hold back in showcasing the long-term effects this one day may have on the rest of their lives. Although we see the physical pain on Sam and Elliot after an IED explodes, it's the mental trauma and pain you know is forthcoming that'll make us question how we treat both current soldiers but also veterans who previously served.
The only nitpick with the movie is that the camera moves so fast, it can be hard to keep track of who's actually on the screen during certain scenes. This is used well during most of the film but there were numerous times where I thought a specific character was the one shooting only to realize they were in a completely different room a few minutes later.
As the movie comes to a conclusion, we're forced to acknowledge the wreckage left behind by the day's events. We see limbs laid out in the streets, we see destroyed buildings, and we see the faces of those whose lives are changed forever. The last scene of the movie is quiet and sees numerous families and soldiers walking out of their houses to view the mess left behind, both emotionally and physically. Although the movie may only take place over a few hours, this final moment reinforces the fact that wars affect not only soldiers but also everyone in their war path.
Warfare is currently in theaters everywhere.