Warfare (2025)

There has been at least one comedian who has noted that America will invade other countries, kill a lot of people, and then make movies decades later about how it made them so sad. It happened after Vietnam, of course, and it has happened even more frequently in the years after the two times that the USA ended up in Iraq for reasons totally not to do with oil. Warfare is another in this ever-increasing selection of movies.

Co-written and co-directed by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, the latter a former US Navy SEAL and a military advisor for some in the film industry, Warfare is interested in nothing more than placing viewers right in the heart of a tense war-time situation. Sadly, once again, it really is interested in nothing more than that, similarly to how Civil War was interested in nothing more than placing viewers as passive spectators in the unfolding titular scenario. 

While much more intense and impactful on a visceral level than his previous movie, Warfare underlines the fact that Garland no longer wants to use art to provide any insight into complex aspects of the human experience. There are main characters we don't really get to know (despite learning some names and superficial identifiers for them), they're ready to fight an enemy for reasons that are never probed and examined, and it's only the bullets and tanks appearing onscreen that will save viewers from slipping into a bored daze.

I get it, I really do. War is hell, and it's also really boring for people in between major life and death moments. But that boredom is also accompanied by tension and a sense of paranoia (although just because American soldiers are paranoid doesn't mean that lots of people around them aren't out to get them). Garland and Mendoza may aim to provide an immersive and authentic experience of life during a specific wartime, but it's all so disappointingly . . . pointless. People are familiar with this particular kind of modern warfare (and I can recommend at least half a dozen movies to anyone who isn't . . . each one better than this) and I would argue that none of the immersion and authenticity here is new or unique. 

The cast includes D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Aaron Mackenzie, Michael Gandolfini, and many more. Everyone does good work, but they're avatars, coming perilously close to being portals into some Call Of Duty game for those who prefer their wars without any context or complexity. I'd offer a financial reward to anyone who could name more than two of the main characters without double-checking the details online.

There's a level of skill on display here, technically, and that's one of the things that helps this to be a bit better than Civil War. It's a very close call though. Alex Garland said a while ago that he intended to take a break from directing. I hope he does so soon, because he's at risk of sliding further and further from the highs of the first half of his filmography into the tedium and mediocrity of his more recent projects.

4/10

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