Rating: 6/10

I love war movies. 

From “Dunkirk” to “Sicario,” the tension in these types of films creates an atmosphere of anxiety that I badly want to experience. Strap me in like a theme park ride and let me ride. 

When I heard that A24 was giving Alex Garland, the director of modern classics like “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” another opportunity to make a war film after the success of “Civil War,” my interest was piqued. “Civil War” was a tension-filled film about war photojournalism, and I was excited to see him replicate that in “Warfare.”

Garland co-directed the film with Ray Mendoza, a technical advisor on many films and new filmmaker who served 16 years as a Navy SEAL.

“Warfare” is based on the memories of Mendoza and his team during the Second Battle of Ramadi, one of the many conflicts during the Iraq War. In what seems like a regular mission to monitor a street’s activity, conflict arises when one of the townspeople throws a grenade into the house they’re occupying, forcing the team to retreat and take shelter to fight off the resistance they then faced. 

This is a rough movie to watch. 

Tension is the word of the day, and we feel it vividly every second of the film. From the silent moments of anticipation to the many violent scenes, we genuinely have to manage our breathing in order to make it through, something that the actors certainly don’t have the pleasure of doing. 

This is largely accomplished due to the terrifying sound design. From blazing gunfire to muffled breaths, it terrorizes viewers by fully immersing us in the action. Sound design is such a vital part of a war film, but “Warfare” takes it to the next level in terms of shocking audiences. 

The acting is also very convincing. 

I’d never before heard such traumatic screams from a film. Composed of an ensemble including D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn and Charles Melton along with many others, the acting is as realistic as you can get.

But in the end, that’s all it was. It was only war. 

We are in a constant state of terror for most of the runtime, nothing else breaking up the stress. While it was great for adding to the atmosphere, it also results in a lack of a cohesive story.

This movie doesn’t have anything to say. Yes, the experiences these men had to go through are traumatic, and audiences should empathize with them. But we have nothing to take away. There’s no message, and honestly it feels like we’re made to care about all the wrong things. 

For example, much of the fighting sequences take place in a house — which the SEALs enter without permission and use to run their daily procedures. The Iraqi family living in it become captives to the SEALs, not allowed to talk or move about unless approved by one of the Americans. 

This house is then torn to shreds by both groups fighting each other during the film. Bombs and “shows of force” are used constantly, and by the end, it’s turned into upstanding drywall, nothing else.

“Warfare” doesn’t seem to care about this Iraqi family and what they had to go through. The film treats them like the enemy when in reality, the American soldiers are the ones who infiltrated and took over their home. We didn’t get any acknowledgement from the soldiers that their actions were wrong, just that it needed to be done to accomplish their mission. 

If these are the “memories” that Mendoza wanted to relive, I don’t want it. 

A history that doesn’t take into account all sides is biased and incorrect. I had a concern before my viewing that this film could fall into the trap of being a “war-propaganda” film, using nationalistic pride as a substitute for a proper retelling of the objective truth. 

While I don’t want to diminish any of the soldiers’ memories and what their perception of the moment was, if you’re unable to take in the memories of the family and represent what they had to go through, you aren’t telling the whole story — which ultimately hurts the film’s reliability. 

This doesn’t mean that what happened isn’t true. It’s haunting to see what these men had to endure. But, when we know the soldiers aren’t morally right in their approach and the film fails to acknowledge it, could we label it as propaganda? Is the absence of all perspectives of the truth the precursor to improper nationalism?

I’ll leave that for you to decide. 

Joshua Abraham is a kinesiology junior and opinion writer for The Battalion.