Warfare, just like Elem Klimov’s harrowing war epic Come and See and Edward Berger’s 2023 Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front, gives audiences an uncensored, unadulterated, bold look at the horrors of war and the bloodshed on the battlefield.

The film is a reenactment of an event that took place in 2006, during the Iraq War. While conducting a surveillance mission, a platoon of US Navy SEALs came under intense enemy fire and sustained heavy casualties, forcing an urgent reassessment of their operational position. 

Co-written and co-directed by Garland and former US Navy SEAL Mendoza, Warfare forgoes the traditional nobility of the cause or so-called valor and glory in battle that has been popular with war films as far back as their inception and instead decides to take on a bolder, unbiased, and more direct form of storytelling with no sides picked - just plainly narrating the event as seen and experienced by the American soldiers. No backstory or background of the characters, a platoon of Seals, and no insight into their operation, a surveillance mission in Ramadi, a city in Iraq.

Many critics and viewers describe the film as a deeply visceral and immersive experience, directly placing the audience into warfare's chaos and brutality. Despite its focus on American soldiers, the film has been perceived by many online as strongly anti-war due to its stark and unglamorous depiction of combat, emphasizing the confusion, fear, and lack of clear objectives, notable in films like the 1985 war/horror Come and See and the more recent All Quiet on the Western Front.

Stripped of the traditional themes of heroism and morality, the film lays bare the destruction, suffering, pain, and tragic musk of bloodshed from live battle. A rather harrowing summary of the film, which is encapsulated in a scene where an Iraqi woman could be seen screaming at the American soldiers, “Why? Why?” begging for an answer, one neither they nor the film could provide, and that in itself is the point of the film, which, like its predecessors, begs the question, is it really worth it, the lives lost, the pain and endless suffering, all prices of war, and for what reason?

You can watch the trailer here: