Few real-world events have served as more durable prisms for American art than the Vietnam War. The conflict itself, the protest movement that opposed it, and the disillusionment its participants felt in its wake were all central to the New Hollywood, in brutal parables like Elia Kazan’s
The Visitors
and Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now
, such as those done by Michael Cimino’s
The Deer Hunter
and Kubrick’s
Full Metal Jacket
, and even reflected in genre works like theصندおすす|RFH
Rambo
TV series and widely watched shows such as those based on adaptations
M*A*S*H
, which ostensibly focused on the Korean War but was broadly recognized as being about Vietnam. Actually, that nation’s name has turned into a colloquial term representing a specific kind of self-absorbed fear within American pop culture.
Movies addressing what’s known as the war on terror haven’t been centered around one main theme or concern. Some films overly praise individuals while pretending to express some reservations (like Clint Eastwood’s).
American Sniper
) and others that do not (such as Michael Bay’s
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
); Kathryn Bigelow has attempted twice to capture a new type of ambiguity, with her 2009 film “The Hurt Locker,”
The Hurt Locker
and
Zero Dark Thirty
, from three years later. The former was awarded Best Picture and the latter was a widely discussed hit, but neither tidily distilled the psychological underpinnings and effects of this newer battle that is stranger, more diffuse, and more abstracted than any before. The definitive cinema about the war on terror may actually be the comic-book morality test of the surveillance apparatus that crops up in the third act of
The Dark Knight
.
As these conflicts, along with their repercussions and associated intelligence systems, expand and escalate, it became almost unavoidable for subsequent adaptations to narrow their focus when brought to the screen. However, despite their increasingly insular versions, these narratives still bear the burden of an immensely turbulent twenty-five-year period. The opening scene captures this essence perfectly.
Warfare
The newly co-directed film by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza depicts a street in Ramadi, Iraq, during autumn 2006, following an eight-month conflict that resulted in at least 1,000 Iraqi deaths and approximately 80 American soldier fatalities. The region appears abandoned, hauntingly so, with only a row of telephone poles lining the desolate road. If shown this scene to someone unfamiliar with the fact that it precedes a war-film narrative centered around the second Iraq War, viewers might observe how those specific poles resemble crucifixes. For those familiar with the promotional material suggesting this connection,
Warfare
as a uniquely transparent lens on modern combat—could also reasonably see them as symbols of the American imperial project that brought us all here.
Warfare
cannot reconcile the difference between documentary and allegory. Mendoza, a retired Navy SEAL who co-wrote the script with Garland after serving as an adviser on the latter’s
Civil War
, has pieced together – through his memories and conversations with his fellow squad members – an ill-fated mission from November ’06 in which he took part. However, a deficiency in explaining the intricacies of a fictional political system leaves
Civil War
Much of its gripping suspense,
Warfare
Its purportedly balanced view of history can result in nothing but propaganda.
This is primarily true because depending on memory does not hold up as
Warfare
The narrative style or method of presentation aims to appear (using an overly charged term) impartial: The events unfold in approximately real-time; the American characters, mostly left without names, are portrayed primarily through their actions when they are shown at all; the Iraqi fighters stay out of sight after the shooting begins. For certain sections, this absence of direct engagement is mesmerizing. Military acronyms and technical terms unfamiliar to non-military readers abound, reducing the setting essentially to a two-story house taken over by the Americans and a nearby marketplace visible mainly through the sights of a sniper rifle.
Occasionally, this constraint reveals more about us: The pointless argument regarding whether a “military-aged male” is merely “peeping” or planning to “probe” underscores how arbitrary our rules of engagement truly are. Ultimately, he was deemed to be “looking intently as though intending to probe.” Despite these terms, nothing can overshadow comments from Americans who speculate that certain Iraqi individuals might be engaging in their “jihad,” or unusual phrases such as a soldier mentioning someone having “newbie vibes.” However, importantly, this feeling of detachment and mystery fades due to the ensemble cast. With Garland being a sought-after director, his team includes notable actors like Charles Melton, Will Poulter, and notably outstanding D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai—representing a strong lineup of up-and-coming men in Hollywood. Their portrayals are intense, skillfully directed, enhanced through Fin Oates’s editing process; yet, despite aiming for authenticity, they still lend the movie a polished appearance typical of glamorous productions.
Warfare
Will also refrain from adopting a visual style that maintains the audience within any presumed realism. Whenever grenades or explosives detonate, the camera jolts—not as it would if fixed on a surface or tripod, but akin to what we experience in typical action films. Characters become momentarily hearing-impaired during these blasts, echoing how TV shows often depict this phenomenon when they shift our perspective into an awkwardly subjective viewpoint resembling those of the characters. Thus, despite its graphic content and starkness, the movie merely turns out to be yet another conventional war narrative, following familiar trajectories leading towards valorous ends. Even without aiming for tranquility at home which usually provides grounding,
The Hurt Locker
(or the romantic tinge of
Dunkirk
, Christopher Nolan’s contemporary take on an evacuation mission from 70 years prior)
Warfare,
ironically, becomes even more ideologically pointed, its superficial claims to objectivity insisting that our emotional investment in the American soldiers’ survival is, or should be, a given.
Clearly, the directors intend for viewers to contemplate the humanity of Iraqi civilians entangled in the war. This dwelling, tactically occupied by American forces, houses two families who occasionally appear amidst personal mementos like photographs and small keepsakes. At various moments, these families are depicted as frightened and huddled in terror due to their circumstances. Even prior to the film’s contentious conclusion, one cannot help but feel that such scenes come off as somewhat patronizing—a recognition of the human toll exacted by actions deemed both unavoidable and essential.
Once the conflict intensifies, these distinctive scouts are left behind; guns blaze randomly into digitally created mist, synthetic aircraft stir up fabricated debris. It’s just another rescue operation. At some moment, we notice one of the telegraph poles mentioned before, now tilted off-kilter.
François Truffaut once remarked that every movie about war inadvertently turns out to be pro-war. This observation touches upon elements that are inevitable and subconscious: how our minds tend to empathize with characters introduced early on, and how the raw intensity of warfare, captured through cinematography, can appear inherently appealing—even amidst its grotesque nature. It goes without saying he wouldn’t have needed to clarify that a film comes across as glorifying war when it concludes with an extensive behind-the-scenes segment featuring side-by-side photographs comparing the actors to the actual SEAL team members they portrayed, many of whom remain unidentified due to their faces being obscured.
Warfare
What we discover is devoted to a specific team member and to the group collectively, for “readily responding when called upon.” By the last picture—depicting these individuals flipping off the camera—it becomes clear this sentiment has been suggested all along.
