Directors: Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland
Stars: Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
Here at The Lost Highway Hotel, acceptable US military propaganda in cinema is more or less limited to Top Gun: Maverick and 2008 Jessica Simpson vehicle Private Valentine: Blonde and Dangerous (probably in that order). When trailers dropped for Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s collaborative Iraq war re-enactment Warfare, all kinds of bells and whistles went off signalling that this might fall hard on the less-palatably shady side of said category, with all the subtlety of a grenade thrown into a foxhole.
Mendoza came to Garland as the tactical stunt co-ordinator and technical advisor on Civil War, helping to orchestrate that film’s White House assault finale. Mendoza’s veteran tales of Iraq moved Garland toward this swiftly-executed follow-up feature, which arrives emblazoned in the same typewriter font used for Civil War, suggestive of an intended through-line.
Many were quick to slam Civil War as frustratingly apolitical; a take I couldn’t quite get on board with as it’s nightmare fantasy of an America torn apart by rampant fascism seemed all-too-pertinent in our present milieu (did y’all miss Jesse Plemons’ scene?). Ironically, it’s taken stepping back in time to do a photorealistic reconstruction of a SEAL mission gone wrong in suburban Ramadi circa 2006 for Garland (and Mendoza) to deliver a film of genuine political disinterest. Wider ideologies are immaterial here. What matters is the moment and the moment alone.
With the exception of the establishing few minutes which see the SEALs hole up within the walls of an anonymous duplex by night, the rest of Warfare unfolds in what is given to be real time. Credit where it’s due, Garland and Mendoza have resisted the temptation to ‘do a oner’ (such a popular grandstanding gesture at present). But total immersion is the major objective here, far clearer than the objective of the SEALs, whose surveillance of the local marketplace is focused solely on tracking potential threats on their position. Why they are there in the first place, we’re never sure (hey, maybe this is a political allegory after all…).
A variety of recognisable faces pepper the squad (Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn), but characterisation is minimal. Still, a few recognisable ‘types’ are made clear, including the evident rookie (Kit Connor’s Tommy). Dialogue is stripped back to the coded chatter of military jargon. Once their position is compromised and dust blooms in the air, telling one man from another is rendered difficult. What unfolds is charged with the tension of professionals at work in a perilous environment, and this continues an emerging trend in modern cinema. Only a month ago Last Breath performed a similar routine, lionising the work of the diligent, resting all it’s laurels on the impressiveness of competency. Is it a reflection of our broadly declining skills and acumen that a job well done is now simply fascinating drama?
For all the film’s exacting efforts to induce a sense of realism, once shit hits the fan Warfare zips between character perspectives subjectively. It’s unfortunate that the tinnitus effect so often associated with the aftermath of an explosion has become such a cliché of action cinema. It’s ubiquity dampens the effect of a sustained sequence that occurs right after the year’s biggest seat-jolting moment. Garland and Mendoza apply it full-force (maybe the best it ever has been, who can judge?), but its an overfamiliar experience. After this we switch between the perspectives of a choice few caught in the aftermath, focusing primarily on young medic Ray (Mendoza’s on-screen avatar played well by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) in his efforts to stabilise two severely wounded comrades while they await back-up and rescue.
What seemed initially akin to watching someone else play Call of Duty turns into a hunkered down nightmare of regrouping, waiting and playing a system that is cautiously depicted as kinda broken. There’s a lean efficiency to the staccato bouts of action, but even Garland and Mendoza aren’t above hero-shot poses of kitted-out Americans blasting up anonymous dark-skinned bad guys. The homeowners cower terrified in a downstairs bedroom, but we learn even less about them and, tellingly, the end credit montage of actors and their real life counterparts finds the real frightened family entirely blurred out.
The technical proficiency keeps Warfare focused and superficially impressive from end-to-end. But for all the grisly weeping and mewling (not a diss; this is as raw a depiction of the human being in agony as you’ll find this year), it’s a cold and clinical affair. In spite of these mini-episodes that get inside the heads of Garland and Mendoza’s anonymous men, the lasting sensation is one of stark, matter-of-fact detachment. Perhaps that’s accurately representative of a war whose stakes and scale were imperfectly drawn and unknown to the men and women on the ground, rendering every action as matter-of-fact and bereft of context. There’s a fatalistic bent to Warfare that emerges in it’s unbiased happenstance. Here, when you decide to take a piss is the difference between standing tall and being dragged out on a makeshift stretcher. Shit just fuckin’ happens in a war zone.
This is some shit that happened.
The Lost Highway Hotel 