Warfare

Here we are again: another war film from Alex Garland—yet “Warfare” marks a tonal shift, a collaborative dive into realism and memory alongside co-director Ray Mendoza.

Distributed once again by A24, this isn’t Garland’s usual territory of speculative dread or high-concept psychological tension. Instead, it’s a searing, unflinching account rooted in lived experience, and it’s one of the most harrowing cinematic events of the year.

Based on Mendoza’s real-life experience as a U.S. Navy SEAL during the Iraq War, “Warfare “ re-enacts the events of November 19, 2006, immediately following the Battle of Ramadi. Told entirely in real-time and crafted exclusively from the firsthand testimonies of the platoon involved, the film rejects traditional narrative embellishment in favor of raw immediacy.

It’s a kinetic, brutal, and intensely grounded war film, dedicated to platoon member Elliott Miller (portrayed with haunting sincerity by Cosmo Jarvis), who was severely injured during the firefight.

If 2024’s “Civil War” saw Garland turning his lens toward journalists caught in the moral gray zones of conflict, “Warfare” plunges deeper into the psyche of soldiers—the ones who live, fight, and bleed in the dust-choked margins of policy and history.

There are no heroes here, no cinematic bravado or patriotic monologues. Instead, there’s silence, sweat, fear, adrenaline—a choreography of chaos told without filters or forced sentimentality.

The emotional gut-punch is precisely in that restraint. Garland and Mendoza strip away the spectacle often associated with war cinema and replace it with tension and truth.

The result is not just a film you watch—it’s one you endure. “Warfare” doesn’t aim to entertain; it exists to confront.

Technically, it’s a marvel. Cinematographer David J. Thompson, captures the choking claustrophobia of close-quarters combat with stunning tactility. Sound design is a character in itself—overwhelming, disorienting, and painfully realistic.

Garland once again shows mastery over sensory storytelling, but this time he uses those tools in service of someone else’s memories, and it shows in the humility of the direction.

The connective tissue with “Civil War” isn’t just stylistic. Mendoza served as the military supervisor on that film, and one can sense the genesis of “Warfare” in their collaboration there.

While “Warfare” isn’t a sequel, nor directly related, it feels like a companion piece: a grim reflection from the other side of the lens, where war isn’t observed—it’s lived.

And yet, for all its formal precision and moral intensity, “Warfare” leaves a deliberately ambiguous aftertaste.

Is it an anti-war statement? A tribute? A memory piece? A chronicle of masculine ego under fire—or of ego unraveling under the weight of its own myth? A brotherhood bond exposed?

Garland and Mendoza don’t answer. They refuse to. What they offer instead is a space for debate. With violence. With memory. With ourselves.

Whether it stands as a historical account or a psychological wound laid bare, one thing is clear: “Warfare” is a provocation. It doesn’t ask to be liked—it demands to be survived.

And survive it you will—but not unchanged.