Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s Warfare commits the cardinal sin of confusing authenticity with entertainment. The film has no dramatic hooks, no scripted banter, no establishment of plot points, no character development, resulting in 90 minutes that feel utterly purposeless.
All that’s provided for the viewer to decipher is jargon, gear, weaponry, ash, gore, screams, bullet casings – essentially a feature-length military training video without the educational value.
The directors strip away every conventional storytelling element, leaving audiences with pure sensory assault rather than meaningful cinema.
Most damning is the complete absence of emotional connection with these soldiers. There’s no gung-ho bravado, no talk of wives or girlfriends back home, no romanticization of war or political speechifying – which sounds admirable in theory but creates hollow characters we simply don’t care about.
Inadvertently, the film becomes a scathing indictment of American military interventions abroad, showing the brutal futility without any context or purpose. The documentary-style approach might work in a 45-minute format, allowing viewers to process the intensity, but stretched to 90 minutes it becomes an endurance test rather than cinema.
Warfare confuses visceral realism with good filmmaking. It’s technically proficient but emotionally bankrupt… a punishing experience that forgets cinema needs more than just authenticity to justify its existence.
Rating: 4/10 (Brutal honesty can’t compensate for the complete absence of narrative purpose or emotional engagement)
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