Warfare (2025) Review
Warfare (2025) is real and brutal anti-war cinema of a useless forgotten war.
Spoilers Ahead
Warfare (2025) begins with an aerobics video of sweaty, attractive blonde women in 80s neon attire moving to the pounding bass of Call on Me by Eric Prydz, an early 2000s club anthem rattling your eardrums in the theater. Something you should be dancing along to, but you’re in your seat. It’s an odd feeling. The screen pans out to the group of soldiers, watching the screen with glee, dancing and moving to the music. You’re filled with this sense of unease. This will be the happiest you see them.
Next is the title card, this story is from their memories, and deafening silence in comparison to the loud club bass of the dark Iraqi street as soldiers comb through searching for a billet to claim from an unsuspecting sleeping Iraqi family. One soldier humps the air, another laughs, one says “this house looks good.” A reminder of some jokes the Marines would make in Generation Kill. The house is claimed, no one harmed, and next we see Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis) manning the sniper rifle, watching the street in front of the house with his weaker spotter Frank (Taylor John Smith). Men sitting around around the house checking radar and comms, it’s a mundane scene but you let them have the reprieve. You know it won’t last forever.
We see Ray (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) on the comms. He looks so young, maybe 20. He’s quiet unless called to speak on the radio. Tommy (Kit Connor) is the proclaimed ‘new guy’ bright eyed and quickest to be shell shocked. Erik (Will Poulter) is the man in charge, maybe a sergeant? He is the one they, and we, trust for guidance, instructions. We never get titles in this movie, not even last names, only first names. Sam (Joseph Quinn) silently watches outside the window shades into the street, he paces. We don’t hear a word from him. There must be something important to say later.
You’re waiting for the click, the gunfire that is sure to come. A dog barking makes you perk up, hairs standing on end. You’re on edge. Elliott takes his position back at the sniper rifle, Frank gets up to take a piss, you see the grenade thrown into the hole in the wall. “Oh shit, run!” I remember saying to myself. Everyone’s on edge, instincts must take over, but it’s only a few seconds and it goes off with a loud bang. Elliott is minorly injured in the blast, or at least it seems that way, his arm is bleeding but he’s standing. Next is a flurry of gunfire, so loud you want to cover your ears as Tommy fires his gun into the close quarters of the room at some unseen targets. The men struggle trying to get Elliott and Frank’s things from the room as the men wait to move out and cas-evac Elliott. It’s a tense situation, everyone high-strung from the blast.
The Bradley tanks roll through and park and everyone leaves in single file groups of 3 or 4 to the tanks, covering from gunfire. Everything seems fine until a sudden explosion rocks through. First you feel confusion, what the hell was that? Surprise? Shock? Awe maybe. RPG was my first thought, I didn’t think IEDs to be an issue especially in a civilian town. But there’s little time to think about it. You see the mangled remains of a soldier, he’s still unrecognizable to me. But it’s not one you know. His lower body blown clean open, eyes dead and vacant beneath his dust covered face and helmet. You’re left with this image multiple times as several of the men wake up in the dust and smoke. Sam croaks awake turning over to see the remains, he looks down at himself and sees his own legs are mangled, half his body on fire. He starts repeating “Oh God,” it's the first loud sound to come through the haze. Sound comes in and out. Muffled, not the usual ringing you’d expect from Hollywood after explosions. It’s hazy like you’re underwater or covering your ears. You get used to the prickle of static, the haze until a sound cuts clear through and scares you. Pulling out the rug.
Erik finds Sam and puts out his fire and pulls him back inside the house to muffled screaming, blood trailing behind him. Ray gets up and finds Elliott, dead (it seems) on the sidewalk, his face bloodied and caked with dirt. Ray stands there for a long time before taking Elliott’s vest and dragging him inside. It’s here where the noise of the comms in Ray’s ear bleeds together and you barely notice it as it raises in volume overwhelming your senses, the fear and anxiety as Ray drags his dead friend, until he yanks out the cord of the comms and it’s silent for now. Until we cut to Sam’s screams. It’s brutal to sit with a man’s screams for a long time, the gory image of his mangled legs, ripped apart by shrapnel. Ray desperately trying to help give first aid, packing with gauze tying tourniquets despite his hands trembling. Sam keeps screaming and he keeps bleeding, sometimes he whimpers trying to hold back the pain you’re sure, until he yells again. It’s like this even after he’s given morphine, far too late to be clear. And Elliott awakens, arm mangled, it’d have to be amputated, and receives morphine though he tolerates his pain much better than Sam, but who can blame him.
Sitting with Elliott and Sam’s pain and blood, and the desperation to help them, it’s one of the most real and harrowing injuries I’ve seen in film. I’m not squeamish or easily disturbed, but even by then it was getting too much for me. Ray’s mind goes in and out, he spaces out, the hearing goes with it. Sam’s screams deaf to our ears though we see his mouth open, face in pain. Erik cracks, his face blank. His voice shaky, he hides himself away, unable to give orders. Tommy stands useless in the corner, tears rolling down his face. The ‘new guy’ has seen too much already. Frank, quiet and shaken. The men are all shaking, petrified.
This is when the other Alpha platoon arrives to relieve them, sending cas-evac again for the mangled men. Confident and almost cocky from their unshaken attitude. It’s a cycle of show of force (the swooping of a fighter jet kicking up a storm of dust down the road), firing shots at the nearby rooftops, and begging for help. Led by Jake (Charles Melton), he relieves Erik of duty in a gentle passing of the torch, his eyes full of sympathy. It’s the one real gentle human interaction we see. And he takes control, managing to get the Bradley tanks sent once again, one for Elliott, one for Sam. And rolled out of the house. The Iraqi family held in a bedroom the entire time were safe, yet kept out of the loop as their house was occupied, bled in, and half destroyed.
The film ends with both men being evacuated, surviving barely, and the insurgents leaving their houses back onto the street once the coast is clear. We are then met with side by side actor soldier photos and scenes from filming, and training, Sam in a wheelchair, set to Dancing and Blood by Low, a pulsing electronic melancholic song “What could I say? Taken aback, all that you gave wasn’t enough.”
Leaving the theater, I was initially rattled. The sound, the images I saw, I knew wouldn’t leave me for a long time. It made me think about what it’s like to live with the real thing. If I was rattled, how must they feel? How would Iraq veterans feel seeing this film? I was impressed with the anti-war messaging and the attention to detail and realism Ray and Alex Garland took with telling this story for general audiences. I have the added benefit of understanding PTSD, the history of the war in Iraq, urban warfare like we see in Warfare, and military language especially in regards to comms. Without this, I’m not sure what it would be like for the average audience member with little knowledge of the War on Terror, fighting, or military logistics. But if this was my introduction to the Iraq war, I believe it would function in a similar eye-opening way as Generation Kill did for me. Making me want to learn more.
Its bottle plot, one location and one platoon, helped immerse you completely. There was no broader exposition, historical narrative, emphasis on the bureaucracy. This was just young men, boys, trying to survive. And at its core, that is what war is. It is tragic and painful and unfair. My one minor flaw with the film is I wish it was longer and I wish we got to know the soldiers better, though the emotional impact of their injury would have likely hit the same regardless. Warfare is a perfect companion piece to Generation Kill and Restrepo, extremely humanizing and effective. Warfare, therefore, is true anti-war cinema at its core. The experience I had watching it will stay with me for a long time. It is a reminder of what this trauma really looks like, sounds like, feels like. Clenched fists and all.