Warfare (2025)

Watched 4/13/25 (theater)

Where Alex Garland and Ari Aster direct, A24 follows (and I follow). Such is the path for two of our most creatively-bulletproof, modern filmmakers and their final-cut-friendly bankroller. These two directors have charted courses of evolving tastes and fascinations, and while Alex Garland is by far the creative which I am more drawn to, I put them in the same conversation often of late. Perhaps it’s that Garland more often bites onto some semblance of commerciality, more often appealing to some of my own more commercial interests. But both dudes just follow their hearts into weird detours of grandiose, extremely personal, and often quite distinctive theses, Warfare being no exception.

Garland, again with A24, most recently put out Civil War before this, a chilly near-future fable of a US President run amok in a third term, causing a continental divide resulting in hyper-realistic modern urban warfare among its residents. Triggering some, and giving others such as myself the rush of being transported into an intocating dystopia, you can’t say the film is without bombast, whether you find it in the actual filmmaking or the conversation around it. Bombast is something lacking from so many Hollywood projects that just refuse to shoot for the moon the way Garland does. The biggest strength of Civil War was its direction, which took the time to draw out every gun-drawn encounter and tense explosion with the maximum impact that the writer/director has been moving toward for the last 10 years since first commandeering his own high-concept scripts.

And that batch of bombs, guns, and the galvanized setpieces that employed them were seemingly heavily influenced by Garland’s new creative partner, Ray Mendoza. Mendoza, a former US Navy Seal turned military advisor/stunt coordinator for the pictures. The boon of Mendoza can certainly be felt with percussive force in Civil War, and if you thought that was a lot, get ready for Warfare. Maybe bring some earplugs.

Mendoza takes a co-writing and co-directing chair on this one, beefing up Garland’s already-pinnacling creative vision with military-caliber detail and a wicked memory-driven conceit. The gambit is that Warfare shall serve as a tight, immediate, and ultimately shellshocking experience for anyone wanting to remember or learn about what serving in a modern combat mission might experience. I have nothing to measure it up against in my life experiences, but the sound design certainly makes a case for them having achieved that goal, and the staging, choreography, and acting that surround it gel to form a concussive, powerful collage of violence.

The cast is truly mesmerizing, with such young up-and-comers as D’Pharaoh Wun-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Kit Connor, Cosmo Jarvis, and countless others taking the bare jargon and screams they’re given to perform to a next level of realism. It’s a harrowing, bracing, immersive journey as you watch these young professionals deal with everything from IEDs, to gunfire, to horrific injuries, to tending to the injuries, to formulating plans minute-to-minute—all in real time.

The SEAL team featured in the movie and their mission are based on the memories of co-writer/director Mendoza and his teammates from that mission. It’s 90 minutes of attempted recreation meant to be a window into the sideways nature of that day, and I certainly left more than a little rattled, hearing the guns and radio ringing at times in my ears. Very effective filmmaking, no fat whatsoever on the bone.

You’re not getting a grand Oscar-y narrative here in the tradition of a Saving Private Ryan or Bridge on the River Kwai. While those classics serve to melodramatize and tell developed stories about their characters, Warfare wants you to sympathize through making you feel as close to their pain as possible, however brief and piercing. While it’s impossible to recreate that feeling entirely, the technology that Garland and Mendoza harness here constructs a roller coaster of fear and triumpth that I have to imagine does justice to the true story. It’s a different, new experience in war cinema. And one that I took no issue with whatsoever, despite being almost wholly unenjoyable. I don’t really think you’re supposed to get more than that out of it—and even with a very low $20-million-dollar price tag, I have no notes. This worked on me and works as a feat of budget bravura.

While I prefer Garland in his predominant field of speculative science fiction, Warfare is a welcome detour that continues to see the English filmmaker expand his horizons after latching onto kernels from the previous movie that you can tell just drive him to the ends of his creative persona. He found something he’s passionate about along the way while making Civil War. Some have complained that his scripts have become more simple while his direction has leveled up. And while I agree with the premise of that argument, I diagree with the takeaway. It only fuels my fascination with Garland’s mission to entertain and make statements through this medium. And if I didn’t spell it out clearly enough, Warfare is a really cool opportunity to watch a veteran tell his story with such resources.

8.5/10