Former Navy SEAL-turned-filmmaker, Ray Mendoza, brings his firsthand experience of the Iraq War to the screen in Warfare, the visceral 2025 war action film he co-directed with Alex Garland.
Based largely on Mendoza’s real-life mission during the Battle of Ramadi, the film has been drawing widespread critical acclaim for its raw intensity, tightly controlled narrative, and haunting realism. See a sample of reviews further below.
Warfare unfolds in real-time over the course of a single harrowing day. Set in November 2006, the film follows Navy SEAL team Alpha One as they navigate insurgent-heavy territory, take control of a multi-story house, and struggle to evacuate their wounded under the constant threat of IEDs and ambushes.
Mendoza, who served as the team’s communicator and JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller) during the actual mission, is portrayed by Reservation Dogs star D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai. The ensemble cast also features Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton.
Garland and Mendoza’s working relationship began on Garland’s 2024 film Civil War, where Mendoza served as the military supervisor. Impressed by Mendoza’s attention to detail and firsthand experience as a former Navy SEAL, Garland invited him to co-write and co-direct Warfare, handing over much of the creative control.
Garland has publicly described his role on Warfare as “supportive,” intentionally stepping back to let Mendoza take the lead, especially given the film’s personal connection to Mendoza’s own experiences during the Iraq War.
JUDGEMENT
“In one scene, early in the movie, we see a soldier providing intel via overwatch, lying prone on top of a stack of cushions for hours, staring into a sniper scope and reporting the smallest movements of people in a market. It’s a wonderfully dreadful scene, with more careful and effective tension-building work than nearly any horror movie this year so far. But that’s more like a side effect to what the movie’s really trying to show us: how hard this day-to-day soldiering really is. After what seems like hours in this position, the soldier finally asks someone else to take over so he can work the cramps out of his legs. Meanwhile, everyone around him looks battered, sun-worn, dehydrated, and utterly exhausted. And that’s before a single shot has been fired.” Austen Goslin, Polygon
“What sets Warfare apart are two simple choices: One—there’s no music. Platoon had one of the most hauntingly beautiful soundtracks in movie history; Oliver Stone’s inspired choice of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings overlaying brutal combat visuals was deeply moving. Warfare is naturalistic in this regard. Warfare has a sound mix consisting of headache-inducing IED explosions, radio comms-chatter, ear-piercing screams, machine guns, Bradley Bushmaster chain-guns, and earth-shattering, shock-and-awe low-passes by F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets. Warfare is a stunning, all-encompassing sensory overload.” Mark Jackson, The Epoch Times
“Due to its source material, Warfare focuses on the Americans, but presents the situation from their perspective without the directors politicising. Everybody here is screwed. It may well be cinema’s most effective, purest anti-war film: there is no sentimentality, no hand-wringing, but most significantly not a second of it makes war look cool, or attractive. There is no score, Garland and Mendoza trusting the cast and the action to do the emotional heavy-lifting; no orchestral propping-up is necessary. Such simplicity makes it even more heartbreaking. It is deeply compassionate. So no, it’s not going to encourage anyone to sign up to the military in a hurry, but it is absolutely a tribute to those who do.” Alex Godfrey, Empire
“The film is cast with a who’s who of the brightest young twenty-something actors, but despite the big names involved, the movie is a true ensemble. There’s no real lead, and the movie allows you to observe them as they try to stay alive. No one falls pretty to any cliches, and you empathize with all of them, from Quinn’s gravely wounded petty officer to Will Poulter as the team’s CO, whose wounds are less physically apparent but just as gruelling. There’s not a weak link among the cast, with Cosmo Jarvis particularly good as the team’s sniper, while Charles Melton makes a big impression as he enters late in the game to try and save his friends from the impossible situation they’ve found themselves in.” Chris Bumbray, JoBlo
“Warfare is leaden with jargon and wedded to procedure—fixated on giving its pack of young actors precise maneuvers to carry out and presenting war as a technical exercise with protocols to follow and operations to be completed, especially in the face of the unexpected. The film’s most effective moments occur when something routine like an evacuation is interrupted by an explosion of violence, forcing the characters to respond with contingency strategies that have been drilled into them despite the panic radiating from their faces.” Rocco T. Thompson, Slant
“The broad strokes of Warfare resemble your run-of-the-mill ‘war on terror’ production, à la Peter Beg’s Afghanistan-set Mark Wahlberg vehicle Lone Survivor. Both films are based on true stories, and follow Navy SEALs surveilling, and then engaging, in firefights with armed insurgents. But where Berg’s movie has an almost holy reverence for American death in the line of duty, Garland and Mendoza’s features no such glory around suffering. Its matter-of-fact irreligiousness verges on nihilistic, making its protracted scenes (and screams) of anguish so excessive that they eventually tip over into slapstick hilarity. Mind you: that’s a good thing. It’s the kind of movie where you have no choice but to laugh — if only to relieve some of the maddening tension — at the soldiers’ horrifying predicament.” Siddhant Adlakha, Inverse
