Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza will surely have anticipated a volley of objections to their ruthless, distressing yet gripping treatment of a disastrous US engagement in the Iraq War. The role of the Navy Seals is not placed “in perspective”. We see the view from only one end of an M4A1 carbine.
Yet any such widening of viewpoint would risk betraying the project’s stark objective. Mendoza, who worked as military adviser on Garland’s Civil War, is, with his colleague, seeking to give some impression of his experiences during a brief, bloody siege in 2006 following the Battle of Ramadi. The perspective is entirely first person. Everything that happened is based on testimonies of the soldiers. Insofar as that is possible, Warfare brings us within the US combatants’ claustrophobic bubble.
There is little plot to speak of. Team Alpha One has taken over an Iraqi house – the unfortunate residents huddle terrified on a lower floor – to monitor comings and goings at a nearby market. There is first a grenade attack. Then an IED causes more appalling damage. Contact is made with the base, but they will need to endure much incoming fire before assistance arrives.
One might facetiously compare the set-up with that in Cy Endfield’s classic Zulu, but there is no such sentimental hat-tipping to enemies here. This is a film about process and procedure. There is a sense of the Seals falling back on jargon as a comfort when brushing against annihilation. The barked acronyms take on the quality of secular rosaries.
Few other American war films have come this close to acknowledging the true suffering of combat. The second half of Warfare takes place over the constant screaming of soldiers whose bowels are visibly spilling out over their waistbands.
It is to the directors’ credit that the action, taking place in something close to real time, is transfixing without being exciting. All that matters is getting through the next 10 seconds. Garland’s hiring of some of the era’s best actors – Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn – allows us to distinguish between characters who barely have dialogue beyond orders, warnings, dressings-down and entreaties for more morphine.
Many will retain understandable uneasiness about the project, but few could deny the technical brilliance and dedication to an austere brief. An essential watch. Though maybe just the once.
In cinemas from Friday, April 18th
