It’s curious how all the prestige around Hollywood war films – lucrative, quasi-recruitment videos and vanity projects for young actors – was punctured by one joke. More than a decade ago, comedian Frankie Boyle said in a set – “Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people – but what’s worse is, 20 years later, they’ll make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers very sad.” It’s a stinging line that rightfully sullied the stock character of the haunted American war veteran. Especially, when such films didn’t show similar sensitivity towards the broad-stroked, faceless ‘jihadis’ and innocent civilians, whose lives are boiled down to just being ‘collateral damage’ before the eventual triumph of the American military. What was once a sure shot for an Oscar nomination – through films like Saving Private Ryan (1998), Black Hawk Down (2002), The Hurt Locker (2007) – has now become a relatively more introspective and self-reflective genre, with even filmmakers like Michael Bay making an effort to assess the problematic presence of America in a foreign land, without glorifying their soldiers.After inheriting all this baggage, Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland’s Warfare distills its narrative footprint to its immediate surroundings. A Navy SEAL unit takes control of a multi-storey building in Iraq. They sneak in and rattle the building’s occupants, waking them in the dead of the night. Walls between two apartments are broken with a sledgehammer, no permission is sought from the residents; a father and his two daughters scream – begging the American soldiers to not shoot. The Navy SEALs don’t wish to hurt the residents, crowding them in one room of the building; they carry out their ‘mission’ of keeping an eye out for suspected Al-Qaeda players. The whole film is about this one mission and its fallout, taking place probably over a few hours.Screengrab from the trailer of Warfare (2025), directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland.Garland, who made Civil War only last year, is seemingly adept at sucking any jingoism out of the war film. Aided by Mendoza – who was the chief communicator of the mission (played by D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) – Garland ensures the film that focuses on the bureaucracy of war. At first, nothing seems to be happening. The soldiers are communicating positions, reporting movement around the house in coded jargon. A sniper at the window (Cosmo Jarvis) is keeping an eye on people looking towards the house, speaking on their mobile phones and sneaking into the house across from theirs. What does the enemy look like? Who is a local? Dread fills the air.Warfare leans into the visceral experience of a unit. While Dunkirk (2017) portrays the industrial nature of war, Mendonsa and Garland’s film seems consumed with its immediacy. It doesn’t have deep reflections on the futility of war, who they’re fighting or what is their role in the larger geopolitics of the region. They’re young boys – most of them in their 20s – carrying out orders, acting like the limbs of a larger organism to further American interests in the region. The only thing that matters is surviving the day, living till tomorrow, and doing this all over again. The cast comprises young talents like Will Poulter, Charles Melton, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn – many of them pegged to be Hollywood’s next big thing. At 34, Melton appears to be the oldest actor in the cast. Mendoza and Garland refuse to engage with the political ramifications of the outfit being there – and what right do they have being there. Kit Connor in Warfare (2025), directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland. Photo: IMDb/A24Warfare might be among the most visceral and authentic documents of American conflict, with Garland using some great technical choices to transport us in the midst of the action. The sound design of the heavy artillery as they exchange gunfire with their opponents, and moments later an IED blast right in front of the house the Navy SEALs are stationed – it felt like I was watching a documentary. When the soldiers wake up disoriented after the blast, still unaware of the grave injuries they’ve suffered, the sound design mimics soldiers being under water. Garland and Glen Freemantle (sound designer) alternate stunned silence with visuals of soldiers screaming after registering the pain of their lower limbs – to abruptly cutting to their primal screams. This is technique of the highest order, transporting us from the cinematic to its most primal form. The film humanises the mute Iraqi residents with a single dialogue. A woman screams – Why?? – staring at the American soldiers with accusatory eyes, after the debris and blood they’ve left behind. The middle-aged father is afforded reaction shots of anger, as American soldiers keep herding him and his daughters like cattle – to keep them safe – while fighting enemies outside.Some might argue Garland and Mendoza’s focus on this one seemingly insignificant mission, as their obfuscating the larger politics of the Iraq war. But I saw the awry mission as a sobering admission of America’s unwanted presence in the region and the pointless bloodshed resulting from it. The last scene of the film sees local militants come out of nearby buildings and wander the streets, after the American tanks have left. It felt like it was an afterthought initially, but the gravity of the scene hit me much later. After 92 mins of hearing the screams and pain of American soldiers – I realised that maybe there are movies out there eulogising the screams and pain of the Other as well.‘Warfare’ is playing in theatres.