Warfare (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – A platoon of Navy SEALs embark on a dangerous mission in Ramadi, Iraq, with the chaos and brotherhood of war retold through their memories of the event.

My Take – We all have seen are fair share of immersive war films, most recently in the excellent 2023 Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, but I don’t think we have seen anything as brutal, forceful and unflinching as this A24 release that offers a real-time portrayal of a 2006 Navy SEAL mission in Ramadi, Iraq.

Co-written and co-directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland (Civil War, Annihilation) and based primarily on Mendoza’s memories of that particular day as a former SEAL, as well as those of fellow soldiers and civilians present, this is a rare war film that is defined by both what it shows and what it does not.

Though the set-up sounds eerily similar to director Ridley Scott‘s Black Hawk Down (2001), directors Garland and Mendoza mainly strip the film of the familiar Hollywood sheen. In the sense, there are no character arcs, no flashbacks, no patriotic overtures or emotional beats, no soundtrack to steer viewers’ emotions, no hand-holding through military jargon, and minimal expository dialogue about the characters or their mission. Leaving us only with dry, gut wrenching and visceral motions of combat.

Grounded in technical precision and extensive tension, this one is a unrelenting war film that is dedicated to realism and refuses to glamorize elements of war.

Sure, the narrative’s marginalization of civilians and translators remains a significant flaw, nevertheless, the strong set of rising stars and immersive sound design succeed in portraying how nightmarish and disorienting a modern combat experience actually is.

Set on 11 November 2006 in Ramadi, Iraq, the story mainly follows Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), a JTAC communicator officer, a member of Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One, which includes commander Erik (Will Poulter), snipers Elliot (Cosmo Jarvis) and Frank (Taylor John Smith), and others soldiers like Sam (Joseph Quinn), Tommy (Kit Connor), John (Finn Bennett), Brian (Noah Centineo) and Macdonald (Michael Gandolfini), among others.

Tasked with securing a compound as an observation post, the platoon takes control of a two-storey local house under the cover of darkness. But unfortunately for them, following increased activity in the parallel market place and withdrawal of their original air support, the whole situation escalates in a gargantuan manner. Shifting the primary objective of the mission to become sheer survival.

Here, the narrative drops you headfirst into the chaos of the mission gone sideways. As mentioned above, there’s no time for character backstories or emotional flashbacks. You’re in the dust and dirt with these men, hearing the crack of gunfire, their ragged breathing, and the communication sets going all frantic. You can feel every panic and fear.

Real war, as this film so powerfully reminds us, isn’t medals and glory. Its blood, guts, and a harrowing sense of hopelessness. Of course, ideology fades quickly, and is replaced by a primal will to survive. Rightfully, a significant portion of the film focuses on the gruesome injuries sustained and the frantic, desperate efforts of fellow platoon members. With the bond between these men, whether during the grinding monotony of endless waiting or at the sharp edge of battle, being almost a character in its own right.

This isn’t your typical war film. Instead it’s a slow-burn portrait of occupation. The fact that some of the soldiers forgot the family was even there, the fact that the Iraqi scouts were forced to evacuate first and thus died, that the family was left behind in wreckage without a word, says volumes about the entire ethos of the conflict. To that end it even doesn’t explain if the attackers were local rescuers or rebels, leaving us to decipher our own perspective.

With Garland‘s directing style and Mendoza‘s commitment to authenticity, the film, thankfully, also avoids portraying time inside the U.S. military as a glorified, video-game-like experience. The action is gritty and unforgiving, capturing not only the chaos of combat but also the devastating emotional toll. With the camera unflinchingly moving along with the soldiers, but never sentimentalizes them.

There’s no slow-mo shots. No seductive glory framing. The lens simply doesn’t find beauty in destruction. The few wide shots we get also show how small they all are, and how futile everything looks from a distance. By peeling away the celebratory trappings, the valor and the glory and the duty to God and country, the film lays bare an awful lot of questions and leaves with overriding impression that once the adrenaline has drained away, how wasteful and pointlessness the whole destruction was.

The cast includes an ensemble of rising stars from D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Taylor John Smith, Henry Zaga, Evan Holtzman and Adain Bradley to comparatively popular faces like Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Joseph Quinn, Cosmo Jarvis, Noah Centineo and Michael Gandolfini, who play their parts well, even when they are largely indistinguishable from the group. On the whole, ‘Warfare‘ is a brutal, haunting and unflinching war feature that succeeds in delivering an emotionally devastating experience.