Warfare: War Is Hell

The film opens with a music video of women doing aerobics. The camera then cuts to soldiers enthusiastically watching, completely engrossed in the video.

In 2006, at the height of the Iraq War, soldiers who threw themselves into the war for their country may have had moments like this. They were not chosen heroes, but utterly ordinary people. The film first presents the sweetness of a brief respite to heighten the horrifying hellscape that follows.

The camera shifts to follow Alpha One, a U.S. Navy SEAL platoon deployed on a mission in Ramadi. Ramadi, near Baghdad, was a battleground where U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents clashed over control of the city.

The Alpha One platoon occupies a two-story residential house (OP1) right in the middle of enemy territory to assist allied movements. However, facing concentrated enemy fire, Elliot and Sam sustain critical injuries. The platoon's objective shifts to rescuing the two severely wounded comrades and returning to base.

The characters' movements begin inside a civilian home and conclude upon escaping it. With a running time of 95 minutes, the film aligns its physical time with the duration it takes for the platoon members to endure and navigate through this chaos. The operation depicted actually took place over just a few hours. Yet on a battlefield where life and death hang in the balance, a few hours feel like an eternity.

Viewers might be reminded of Saving Private Ryan. However, Warfare features neither large-scale combat scenes nor grand heroic tales. Rather than relying on spectacle, it is a tragedy faithful to realistic depiction. The details are emphasized to the point that it feels as though a microscope had been installed inside and outside the civilian home at the time.

There is no music in this film. Instead of a score, the movie is filled entirely with the sounds of war: gunfire between enemy and friendly forces, the deafening roar of fighter jets flying overhead, alongside Elliot bleeding and crying out in pain, and Sam's desperate pleas for morphine, which torment the audience throughout the entire running time.

Director Alex Garland, known for Ex Machina and Civil War, teamed up with Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL who actually fought in the Battle of Ramadi, to recreate that tense reality. Based on Mendoza's vivid memories and the testimonies of his fellow veterans, the completed script meets hyper-realistic direction and is reborn as a film.

The directorial approach of Warfare silences audiences who have hitherto consumed war movies as spectacle. The combat unfolding inside and outside the civilian house cost two soldiers their legs and their voices. It is easy to imagine that the family of civilians living there would suffer from lifelong trauma. Shaking in terror and holding their breath the entire time, they scream "Why! Why!!" at the platoon members as they leave after turning their home into a wasteland. There was no answer.

Directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza keep their focus squarely on the Alpha One platoon. Iraqi insurgents are portrayed solely as external enemies and invisible attackers. At the same time, the film does not highlight the individual backstories or specific characters of the Alpha One members. There is also none of the patriotism typical of American war movies.

The two directors remain wholly focused on their goal of making the audience feel the horrors of war through sight and sound. Some might point out that the message is absent or that what the film intends to say is ambiguous. At the end of hollow questions such as "What did we fight for?" and "What kind of war left behind what?", the only answer that emerges is that "war is hell."


(SBS Entertainment News | Reporter Kim Ji-hye)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.