Many war films of the past go the extra mile, meaning that they will dramatize certain events or techniques to entertain the audience in the spectacular. That can be somewhat beguiling, but in Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s “Warfare,” it is all bloody, unadulterated hostility that focuses on a real-life mission from Mendoza’s time in Iraq.
The film is exhaustingly extensive in its shots of unbearable pain, and its close-ups of dissociative worry are sickening, as if you're living this experience with this platoon of U.S. Navy Seals in Iraq in the middle of a surveillance mission. As time passes, they update their superiors with the goings-on of the people outside of the home they are taking refuge in. They sweat, with their hands gripping their machine guns, sometimes brushing aside curtains to view outside, waiting for something to happen. This is a large part of the film: waiting.
Garland and Mendoza obviously don’t care about the discomfort of the audience anticipating something t...
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