Rating: R | Runtime: 95 minutes
Release Date: April 11th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: A24
Director(s): Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland
Writer(s): Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland

Peeking with serious intent to probe.

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza has been in and around Hollywood since the active-duty-starring gimmick that was Act of Valor in 2012. While credited as “stunts” and “additional crew” back then, his position as a subject and inspiration for Warfare sees him pulling duties as co-writer and co-director with industry veteran Alex Garland to bring to life his experience surviving an ambush on November 19, 2006, shortly after the Battle of Ramadi. Crafted from his platoon’s first-hand accounts to create as authentic a portrayal of what happened as possible, the film unfolds in faux real-time as everything spirals out of control.

There’s no backstory needed as the reasons for them commandeering a civilian home and the mission they sought to complete are irrelevant once their situation turns dire. As soon as the first grenade is thrown through the makeshift window Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) is using to spy on enemy activity across the street, they are thrown into survival mode. An IED explosion later demands additional support, some creative lies, and a lot of morphine to stay in one piece as exfiltration plans evolve. Men are bleeding out. Others are shell-shocked to the point of no longer being able to think clearly or maintain focus. It devolves into continual gunfire and guttural screams.

Mendoza and company do a wonderful job humanizing these SEALs so they don’t become just a group of indoctrinated automatons with the sole goal of killing. Whether the opening scene of them all huddled in front of a television to watch the aerobics-set music video for Erik Prydz’s “Call on Me” or their genuine desire to keep the inhabitants of their new Iraqi base of operation safe (regardless of caring little for their future or possessions upon leaving), they’re allowed personalities, courage, and, mostly importantly, fear. That’s what makes this film more than either a jingoistic battle cry or agenda-driven anti-war propaganda. It’s instead a captivating look into the experience of war stripped of politics to focus on its physical, emotional, and psychological cost.

It’s Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai playing Mendoza) moving from ultra serious to desperate to overwhelmed. It’s Erik’s (Will Poulter) always calm and collected objectivity to know where all his men should go in any given scenario and when the chaos of following those plans proves he can no longer trust himself to do the job. It’s Elliott and Sam (Joseph Quinn) falling apart as their stoic strength evaporates into anguish. Macdonald (Michael Gandolfini) going all butterfingers, Tommy (Kit Connor) losing his “new guy” energy by necessity, and Jake (Charles Melton) entering the fray to take over and see that no one gets left behind. And so many bullets firing just to stay sane despite hardly any of them hitting flesh.

Mendoza and Garland are putting us into the action. They’re portraying its immediacy and danger—the impossibility of what our military is asked to do. There are no winners or losers here. There are merely survivors and the dead. Nothing is gained by what occurs as neither side experiences anything but loss. Take whatever message you want from that stark truth because the concept of world peace has never been further out of reach. The goal isn’t therefore to position the military as bad or laud these specific men as heroes. It’s simply to remind us that our veterans, like those they murder, aren’t statistics to be forgotten. They aren’t killing machines to be disposed of upon returning home forever changed. They’re human beings who’ve walked through Hell and, at the very least, demand our respect.

That’s the difference between a Warfare and a Saving Private Ryan. Both are effective. Both feel real. But only one positions the soldiers at the forefront. Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece uses its characters to tell a story and bring emotional resonance to an historical event. Mendoza and Garland’s dramatic reenactment gives life to the men who felt those emotions. Theirs is twenty-plus stories overlapping and converging to ensure there will still be another chapter to tell for as many of them as possible. It’s not about securing land or victory or an assassination. It’s about remembering that the lives of our enlisted men and women remain important despite our government’s desire to use them as expendable cogs in a machine. Martyrdom isn’t a prerequisite to prove one’s purpose.

So, don’t expect any gloss on-screen. This is all smoke, fire, dirt, and blood. It’s deafening silence, ringing ears, and nightmare-inducing wails. It’s bodies turned to meat and toxic masculinity dissolved into empathy and terror. Hard calls are made, regret becomes unavoidable, and true bravery arrives in the form of protecting the guy next to you rather than charging towards certain death alone. Mendoza has the logistics and pyrotechnics giving cinema’s war canon an invigorating shot in the arm, the cast imbues its characters with souls worth saving, and the heart shown to willfully circumvent chain of command reveals what we hope remains true today in a time of rampant kowtowing to unlawful, autocratic demands: that some soldiers and law enforcement still understand the difference between wrong and right.

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(L-R) Joseph Quinn, Michael Gandolfini, Joe Macaulay, Henrique Zaga, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Kit Connor, Noah Centineo, Taylor John Smith, Adain Bradley, Cosmo Jarvis, Charles Melton in WARFARE. Courtesy of A24. Credit: Murray Close.