A squad of American soldiers seemingly randomly select an house in Ramadi and having relocated it’s sleeping occupants to the ground floor, set up a sniper station from where they can monitor the goings on around them. Initially, this all looks harmless enough as the Iraqi locals go about their business, but gradually the spotters become suspicious of repetitive activity, the odd person who seems to be snooping on them - and then, well all hell breaks loose leaving them facing an existential threat that will test their mettle, their equipment and require some feats of legerdemain if they are to survive long enough to be rescued. There is quite some intensity to this drama as the young men under siege must each deal with their fears, strengths and weaknesses under a constant stream of fire. Will Poulter’s “Erik” leads the team, but the best effort for me came from his comms man “Ray” (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai) and, though sparingly, from Kit Connor’s rookie “Tommy” who, like us watching, had no idea what they were doing in this house and what the purpose of their mission actually was in the first place. There isn’t so much a script as an increasingly nervous dialogue that disintegrates as their predicament becomes more perilous and the photography and particularly the audio serve really well in conveying a sense of the lethally claustrophobic atmosphere in which these men had to function. Real veterans wrote the story, advised the production and that shows in something that is certainly incomplete from a narrative perspective, but is uncomfortably enthralling to watch and graphically displays the horrors of urban warfare.

'Warfare' ends up as expected: bleak and miserable. The sound design is truly outstanding, such fine work ensures that you hear and feel everything. The plot being told in real time makes it rather captivating too, the tone of either trepidation or torment is omnipresent. Well, I say omnipresent, that's taking out the opening scene. I was not expecting that! Very fun though and a good way to show a snapshot of the camaraderie. It shouldn't work because it's not like it matches the rest of the film, but I gotta say I really loved it. What a tune, by the way. It's a fairly stacked cast list, from Will Poulter to Joseph Quinn to Charles Melton to Michael Gandolfini to D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. No-one actually stands out individually, but I think that's entirely a good thing because it obviously isn't a story about any one person - it's about all of them.

"Warfare" is as simple a statement as you can get, on the reality of conflict. Warfare can be dull, even bureaucratic, with its own language, spoken over radio in codes. Equally, its frenetic, violent and horribly visceral. We see all of these aspects of war, in this film. I'll admit its depressing, sad, underlining in blood, the wastefulness of war. Mind you, that's what war is. Not heroic, symphonic, grandiose. Suffice to say, I liked this film. Its unpretentious and makes you question, not only the need for war but attempts to make it appear noble, when clearly, its nothing of the kind. In summary, a realistic portrayal of the true face of war. Something every young person, thinking of joining the military, should watch.

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://movieswetextedabout.com/warfare-movie-review-garland-and-mendoza-strip-the-genre-to-its-rawest-form/ "Warfare is a film you admire more than you enjoy. Its anti-narrative structure, slow pacing, and lack of strong central figures make it difficult to revisit - but impossible to forget. It's a remarkable display of technical realism, a brutally honest recreation of a war zone, and a testament to cinema's power when it refuses to play by the rules. Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza may not have crafted a universally captivating masterpiece, but they've created something undeniably authentic. And sometimes, that's enough." Rating: B

Difficult to not notice a typical Netflix/Prime budget canvas. forces you to admit all happening in one room one street or just in your imaginations. Lost patient, tried fast forward several times but nothing really changes or happens. Seems like all high rating are for the real incident and to real soldiers. Sorry this is the review of a movie like any other movie.

They say “War is hell,” and, without a doubt, there’s plenty of evidence to back up that contention. But rarely, if ever, does anyone say that “War is boring,” although that can certainly be said about its depiction in this latest offering from writer-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. This fact-based account tells the story of a Navy SEAL unit charged with providing support for a US Marine operation in Ramadi during the Iraq War in 2006. Filmed in real time, the picture seeks to take viewers onto the front lines of this urban warfare setting, one that results in an ambush by insurgents armed with grenades, guns and IEDs, leading to fatalities and multiple life-threatening injuries. The attack, in turn, necessitates calls for evacuation that place the rescuers in extreme peril as street fighting intensifies around them, portraying this hazardous battlefield scenario in an authentically choreographed re-creation of on-the-ground events. But, in depicting the conflict, the filmmakers ponderously commit the grave error of making it mind-numbingly dull; it’s so “clinical” and by the book that it’s devoid of any sense of viewer engagement, with no character development, no emotional involvement and virtually no background about why any of this is transpiring in the first place. In fact, the narrative so anonymizes the circumstances surrounding this incident that the film ends up coming across like little more than a big screen version of a video game. Frankly, that raises the question, what’s the point of this, and why should the audience care? To compound matters, the picture’s protracted opening sequence, which chronicles the preparation and intelligence-gathering setup for the main event, goes on forever, leaving viewers wondering if anything is ever going to happen. And, when it at last does (and quite predictably at that, a quality that characterizes the film overall), the story becomes little more than an endless stream of gunshots, explosions and grotesquely wounded soldiers screaming in agony. Is this supposed to be “entertainment”? Indeed, by that point, “Warfare” becomes more of an endurance test than an estimable work of cinema. It thus makes one wonder about the purpose behind this production. If the intent is the misguided glorification of combat, it doesn’t do much to favorably make its case. And, if it’s meant to declare an anti-war statement, it seems strangely proud and self-congratulatory of its achievements in capturing the authentic look and feel of conflict, qualities that would appear to undercut such a core message. Even setting aside these philosophical issues, the film’s lack of focus beyond the battlefield footage causes it to fail even as a war picture in purely conventional terms when compared to countless other predecessors, including any number of World War II and Vietnam Era offerings, as well as more contemporary releases like “Black Hawk Down” (2001), “The Hurt Locker” (2008), “Good Kill” (2014) and “Eye in the Sky” (2015). When all of these considerations are taken collectively, this release has little going for it on so many fronts that it’s difficult to fathom the rationale for its existence – or a reason why anyone would realistically want to see it.

71/100 An extremely realistic and ofttimes painful depiction of warfare mostly contained to a single setting as a group of navy seals are under siege in Ramadi, Iraq. Based on the memories of those that experienced it first-hand, it's violent, brutal and, although the events take place in real time, they were able to capture that feeling that the soldiers felt the siege going on for hours instead of only 90 mins. No theatrics, no explanation as to why they're there, no personal info about the people, no big action sequences, just raw warfare at its most savage and uncompromising. -- DrNostromo.com