Warfare, co-directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Civil War) and former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, has one clear goal: make you feel like you’re inside a combat mission during the Iraq War. Think the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, but stretched into 90 relentless minutes inside a crumbling house in Ramadi.
The premise is bare: a group of American soldiers—played by exceptional, committed actors who underwent intensive military-style training for authenticity—invades a civilian home and uses it as a temporary surveillance base. There are no backstories to lean on—no one carries a photo of a lover back home or reminisces about their life as a teacher. What we learn about these men comes only through how they respond under pressure: who freezes, who charges forward, who holds it together.
The film’s characters are direct representations of real people, with the credits showcasing each actor beside their real-life counterpart. But under Garland’s direction, they’re nearly faceless by design. The idea is clear: these soldiers could be anyone. That’s conceptually powerful, but it also creates distance. Films like Saving Private Ryan, The Hurt Locker, or Lone Survivor showed that immersion and character development can coexist. Warfare chooses otherwise—and that choice limits it.
Garland succeeds at what he sets out to do: achieve realism through immersion. But the scope is narrow. Once the dust settles, there’s not much else to hold onto.
That said, the sound design is phenomenal. As in Civil War, Garland leans on audio to tell the story. Bullets, footsteps, screams, and explosions become the score. It’s raw, visceral, and elevates the film into a physical experience. But even that can only take it so far. For all its intensity, Warfare begins to feel more like a war simulation than a fully formed narrative. There’s no emotional arc, no moment of reflection. One extra scene, one deeper look behind the helmets, might have gone a long way.
Like in Civil War, Garland’s political stance remains frustratingly limited—as if he’s hesitant to confront the deeper controversies surrounding war, especially this one. We spend the entire film inside the home of an Iraqi family, watching them silently endure the horrors unfolding just outside their walls. Near the end, the mother cries out again and again, “Why? Why?”—a gut-wrenching echo that leads into the final images of bodies, crumbled buildings, and dazed survivors roaming through the wreckage. After 90 minutes of unflinching close-ups of wounds, lingering takes of mangled bodies, and an unrelenting atmosphere of dread, it’s clear Garland wants the imagery to speak for itself. But it still feels like something’s missing—a moment of reflection or clarity that pushes beyond “look how bad war is” toward something that truly resonates and stays with you.
As soldiers are thrown into battle without understanding why, Warfare mirrors their disorientation by staying entirely in the moment, focused on the raw struggle to survive. The result is a deeply immersive experience—realistic, relentless, and backed by fantastic sound design that places you right in the middle of the war. But with little character development and only a surface-level sense of purpose, the film ultimately feels emotionally hollow. It plunges you into the chaos with unmatched intensity, yet when it comes to lasting impact, it fires blanks.