“Warfare” is unlike any movie you’ve seen before. Not quite a biography, nor a biopic, but a real story all the same. The 95-minute film recounts the events of a 2006 Navy Sea, Air and Land (SEAL) mission in Al-Qaeda-controlled Ramadi Province, Iraq. While it may look like a typical war movie at first glance, “Warfare”’s significance lies most in its backstory, intentions and execution.
Rather than the “based on a true story” branding that combat movies like “Lone Survivor” and “Saving Private Ryan” have, “Warfare” instead proclaims that “everything is based on memory.”
The tagline is not just a fancy way of saying the same thing. Instead, it refers to the way that writer-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza created the film by “forensically” piecing together the timeline and details of the mission-gone-wrong through interviews with the SEALs who were actually there, one being Mendoza himself.
The mission was meant to be relatively straightforward: the “Op 1” team — one of the three groups that the SEAL team had split into — was in charge of surveilling an urban residential area from the second-story apartment of a building that was next to an insurgent house, which they did not realize until it was too late.
Following a surprise enemy attack with a grenade, the team attempted to extract their wounded, only for an improved explosive device (IED) to gravely injure two of the SEALs. From there, the situation became increasingly dire, as the SEALs, now surrounded, had to keep themselves and their wounded teammates alive while waiting for another chance to evacuate.
Despite the fact that United States military operations had been active in Iraq since early 2003 and would continue for roughly another five years following the mission in the Ramadi Province, “Warfare” focuses solely on this one event experienced by this specific team, forgoing any mention of the larger conflict concurrently at hand. Furthermore, it was an explicit rule between the co-writers to create the film’s screenplay based on exactly what was reported, with none of the dramatization or editorialization that many war-based movies tend to infuse for the sake of keeping viewers entertained.
This decision traces back to the fact that, according to Mendoza, general audiences were not who he had in mind when creating “Warfare.” During an interview with the Technique, the writer-director explained, “I made it for Elliot … and I kind of made it for veterans; that was kind of what I was focused on. … It’s not about anything other than the event because we were making it for one person.”
When he says Elliot, he is referring to Elliot Miller, a sniper and combat medic on the Ops 1 team who sustained extensive and severe injuries from both the grenade and IED explosion. To this day, Miller is unable to remember what happened. “Warfare” acts as a “living document” that gives him the ability to see what happened that day, experiencing it through the memories of his teammates.
The timeline, screenplay and set design were all reliant on the interviews that Garland and Mendoza conducted with Miller and Mendoza’s former team, as well as other “characters” involved. The first to be interviewed for the movie, Mendoza told the Technique that Garland “almost functioned as a therapist. He was like, ‘What were you feeling? Do you have regrets? What went wrong?’… It was very therapeutic in some ways.” For the other interviews, the co-writers conducted them together, comparing everyone’s recounts to reconstruct the day, bringing it out of the past and eventually onto the screen.
The intentionality behind the film is something that carries throughout every decision made by everyone involved, adding a layer of depth and rawness that not even the most emotional military-centric movies manage to achieve.
“Warfare” holds nothing back, laying everything out on the table without the cinematic cushions of dissolves or fade-to–black shots that might spare audiences from seeing the gruesome parts of combat, such as graphic injuries and dead bodies. Any techniques that may provide a sense of comfort and dissonance, such as the ability to see incoming attacks before the characters are excluded from the film. Viewers are just as caught off guard by the grenade as the SEALs are, and, because the soldiers are not given the comfort of knowing when they will be rescued and if their teammates will survive until then, neither are viewers.
The adherence to reality, rather than typical war movie conventions, also stands out in the film’s incredible sound design. Similar to the lack of cinematic visual cues, “Warfare” also lacked typical auditory effects, such as a soundtrack or instrumental scoring. Audiences are only able to hear the ambient sounds of the Iraqi residential area outside the building and the SEALs going about their business inside.
The sound design’s greatest strength comes in the skillful way that it handles the absence of sound. The silence in many portions of the film is still loud in its own way, with every rustle of clothing and shift in body position noticeable, building feelings of tension and uncertainty. If the soldiers are surprised, so is the audience. Moments after the IED explodes, viewers experience the same feelings of panic and disorientation as the SEALs as they try to compose themselves enough to get to safety.
Though the writing and directing aspects of the film were done together, Garland and Mendoza each had particular responsibilities when it came to making the movie. According to a separate interview with Garland, he was in charge of handling the technical and logistical aspects, while he says “the heart and soul of the story, including working with the actors, became [Mendoza’s] job.”
“Warfare” also stands apart from typical military movies in its focus on casting younger actors. Rather than the actors that typically play onscreen soldiers — the older ones with well-known faces — Garland and Mendoza looked for men in their 20s and 30s. Tying back to the desire for realism, Mendoza wanted to remind anyone watching the movie that, more often than not, the soldiers actually fighting wars like the one in Iraq are very young. In fact, to qualify for the Navy SEALs, soldiers must be under 29 years old.
The cast roster includes Will Poulter (“Maze Runner”), Joseph Quinn (“Stranger Things”), Cosmo Jarvis (“Shōgun”), Taylor John Smith (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), Charles Melton (“Riverdale”) and Kit Connor (“Heartstopper”). Mendoza himself, a Navy SEALs communications officer during this mission, was played by 23-year-old D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (“Reservation Dogs”).
While none of the actors hit the Navy’s minimum age of 17 years old, their youth does not go unnoticed, closely resembling college students more than action heroes.
In addition to age, physicality was another factor taken into account when Garland and Mendoza made casting decisions. Before filming, the cast underwent a three-week boot camp based on BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL), the training that real Navy SEALs have to go through to prepare them for the intense, high-stress situations they are expected to perform under.
The training was led by Mendoza — who also served as a Land Warfare Training Detachment and BUD/s instructor during his time with the Navy — and Tim Chappel, a former Royal Green Jacket in the British Army. The training included everything the actors needed to learn for their roles, from radio etiquette and proper terminology to weapons handling and tactical maneuvering.
During an interview with the Technique, Connor, who plays Tommy, a gunner on the Ops 1 team, described the whole experience working on “Warfare” as “different to anything that I’d ever experienced or known.” Among the younger cast members at 21 years old, he said that he knew the role, and the preparation it required, “was going to be a challenge … I was definitely nervous to begin with, but I think it was a fascinating experience for all of us to kind of immerse ourselves in that world and experience it together.”
Connor talked about the long, 12 to 15-minute takes they would do during filming and each actor’s elevated commitment to these particular roles. He said, “Whether the camera was on you or not, we were kind of expected to stay in [the role] as much as possible and never really switch off, which was something that, often on a film set, you don’t really have to do, although I do think … that’s really one of the things that makes the ensemble’s performance a level better, is just the fact that every time that any character looks at another person in the room, they’re not taken out of [the scene], they’re completely immersed in it.”
“Immersive” is certainly a spot-on word to describe “Warfare,” and the immersive nature of the film helped to create the sense of realism that Mendoza wanted.
To maintain and further the authenticity of the filming process, Mendoza brought in additional expertise in the form of original members of his SEAL team, including Elliot Miller.
“It’s much easier to see the weight of a situation and to see the effects and the impact of an event when you have the people who were present around you. So I think it was just a really positive thing for us as actors to be able to understand not only the people that we were portraying, but the effects of that event and the true weight of it,” Connor said.
This weight that the actor describes is palpable even to audiences. Even for people who do not tend to lean toward military-centric movies, watching “Warfare” allows a glimpse into an experience that is so personal to someone and shows the process of multiple people’s lives changing in mere hours.
“Obviously, I know [that] anyone outside of that is going to receive it a certain way but I wasn’t so much focused on ‘Oh this is how I want other people to receive it, outside of one community.’… it’s focusing on those peaks and valleys, those microstory points in there. … [I wanted] veterans to use this as a voice. So now, anyone outside of that, maybe it helps bridge a gap, maybe it raises a question or a way to start a conversation … if that’s something you’re interested in learning and talking about, then that’s great, this is a great starting point for that,” Mendoza said.
“Warfare” may not be the movie viewers will go to for a feel-good hour-and-a-half, but it is definitely a movie worth seeing. It is a powerful memory that has been waiting to be recounted in this way since Mendoza got his start in the film industry; a beautifully and painstakingly crafted tribute from one brother to another.