The word “visceral” will almost certainly be used in nearly every review of Warfare, director Alex Garland’s follow-up to last year’s similarly assaultive political thriller Civil War. Taken both in the metaphorical sense of “emotionally gutting” and the literal one of, well, having to do with guts, “visceral” is a tough adjective to avoid in describing this forensic reconstruction of a real-life battle that took place in 2006 in the Iraq city of Ramadi. Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL and Iraq War veteran who served as a consultant on Civil War, was a part of the operation in question and shares both writing and directing credit here with Garland.
The craft on display in this almost real-time reenactment of an improvised explosive device attack and the ensuing chaos is impressive, from David Thompson’s fluid but never needlessly jittery handheld camera work to Glenn Freemantle’s nerve-shredding sound design. But the filmmakers’ unblinking focus—the camera rarely leaves the small house the soldiers have commandeered as a surveillance site, the soundtrack includes no music, and the roar of the explosions, shouted orders, and howls of pain is deafening—winds up being both the source of the movie’s sickening minute-to-minute suspense ...
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