There is a moment in the classic Citizen Kane where elderly Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten) says to the young reporter “I remember everything. That’s the greatest curse ever inflicted on the human race: memory.”
This quote ran through my head not long after the opening of Warfare, which tells us that what we are about to see is not based on any documented story so much as it is the memories of those who engaged in it. It won’t take long to have you agree with the idea of memory being a curse after the events unfold in the film.
Since there is not much going as far as plot is concerned, the film is more a recollection than it is a story. One of the film’s directors, Ray Mendoza, was a part of this Navy Seal Team during the Iraq war in 2006 (his film counterpart is played by D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai). He and a group of his fellow soldiers are set to install a sniper’s nest in a building in Ramadi. Events unravel in this short window of time (no more than a day) that make up the rest of the film.
Even with Mendoza being a character in the film, there is still no lead character. Everyone has their own shared amount of equal time on screen (I did find out though that Ray and Elliot are the only characters to keep their real names: the rest used fake names for the sake of anonymity). That does not take away from how effective all the actors are, as we get sublime work from young stars such as Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo, Joseph Quinn, Taylor John Smith, Kit Connor, and Michael Gandolfini (son of the late James Gandolfini).
Behind the camera, Mendoza co-directs the film with Alex Garland (whose most recent project was last year’s brilliant Civil War). Even with Garland, I was admittedly hesitant about another war movie, mainly because I have seen too many to date.
The film does not take long to bring its intended effect on the viewer, assaulting them on every one of the five senses (there was a moment when I thought, “What does war actually smell like?”). Of course, the main sense is sound, and the result is proof that some movies need to be seen in theaters. I was reminded of what Francis Ford Coppola said about Apocalypse Now (1979):
“I don’t want the movie to be about Vietnam: I want it to be Vietnam.”
There is a simple thing that Garland and Mendoza do on the script level (they both wrote it), which is to let us know as little as possible of each soldier we see. We don’t get any back story to any of them: no pregnant girlfriend back home, no recent college drop out, etc. Yet we still are able to feel and fear for everyone on screen in uniform (the only minor downside is that it is hard to remember who is who).
Parents, I understand some fathers wanting to take kids to see war movies at a certain age, but that won’t stop me from mentioning this film truly holds nothing back. The violence and agony are gruesome, although if a young teen (say middle schooler or older) has seen something like Saving Private Ryan (1998) they would not see anything worse here (although there is some mild sexual content in the first minute or so when the soldiers are watching a suggestive dance video.)
Simply put, Warfare is a film you don’t see but you bluntly experience. Now, I know that does sound rather cliche, but it has been some time since I have said that about any movie. This is easily the best of the year so far.
Overall:
Nothing else to say 