Warfare

I'm generally of the opinion that Alex Garland is one of the most talented filmmakers in the industry today. Whether as a screenwriter on 28 Days Later, Dredd, and Never Let Me Go, or as a director on Ex Machina, Annihilation, and most recently Civil War, he is a gifted storyteller.

In this case, he's a screenwriter who worked closely with war veteran Ray Mendoza to create a authentic and hyper-realistic film rendering of a very specific war situation in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006. In fact, the script is based entirely on a small group of soldiers' memories of this terribly pressurised and stressful situation that has been welded into the collective consciousness of the group.

Warfare gives us an hour and a half in hell, but a hell we know and that is far closer to us than figurative, symbolic renderings from fictional stories. This happened, and it happened in broad strokes as we see it in Warfare, and so the film quickly gets very, very close to the viewer, and by only sparingly using actual effects, you never feel deceived or manipulated into feeling or reasoning. What we have here is cinema in its purest form, and both Garland and Mendoza manage with elegance and a sure hand when considering any goal they aim for (pun very much intended).

The film recounts the tragic situation that occurred when an IED foiled an attempt to evacuate a member of the group during firefights in Ramadi in 2006, severely wounding one and killing several. It's a down-to-earth narrative that limits its ambitions to telling a specific situation in real-time and exclusively from the soldiers' POV.

And these soldiers are played by a masterful cast consisting of Shogun star Cosmo Jarvis, Stranger Things hit Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, and Michael Gandolfini, strong, relatively young talents who will no doubt dominate going forward, and each of their talents are on full display for the hour and a half of Warfare. There's nowhere to hide, there's no fancy editing or other effects - there's just the actors' ability to transport us effectively to time and place, and in Warfare this happens seamlessly.

I'm the son of a film composer, so my only complaint is that it's a bit of a shame that the film doesn't want to use even an original score to enhance or accentuate certain moments. If you've seen Sicario, the late film composer Jóhann Jóhannsson was able to enhance the horrors of that film with sparse but powerful musicality that could have benefited Warfare, and also without compromising the realism and earthiness of the film.

However, Warfare is a triumph, both for the soldiers who are honoured to have their story told in such an accurate way, but also for Garland, who, across genres and roles on various film productions, proves once again how talented he is. Bravo.