Warfare

Many will retain understandable uneasiness about the project, but few could deny the technical brilliance and dedication to an austere brief. An essential watch. Though maybe just the once.

What if you stripped away all the hooky plotting typical of military dramas, and just put an unembellished skirmish from a real war on-screen? Would it still work as cinema? The answer is yes.

Together, Garland's virtuosity and Mendoza's first-hand experience create a masterful technical achievement that is, more important, emotionally harrowing.

If a movie can be elegant and brutal at once, this one is.

But by choosing to skip over such traditional narrative strategies as character differentiation... the filmmakers leave out an element that is crucial to the viewer’s engagement.

While it's admirable Mendoza and Garland stitch together this agonizing portrait of the perils of war, its demands on young soldiers, and the merciless reality of combat, I was unsure how to feel about it.

A slice of visceral verité... that said, as with Civil War, it’s difficult not to feel as if Garland’s continued insistence on abstracting the Politics out of War does some disservice to reality

Alex Garland and veteran Ray Mendoza stage with surgical precision the brutality of a moment in the Iraq War, somewhere between fascination and horror. [Full review in Spanish]

Lacking in all framing—both a sharp choice and a convenient escape hatch for attempted apoliticism—Warfare is a tense, terse snapshot that’s more coordinates than story.

A gritty, visceral and intricate thriller that is as brave as it is brutal. Warfare is understatedly simple yet it is hard to look away - and don’t bother covering your ears, its impact needs to be seen as well as heard.