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Review: ‘Warfare’ is a Harrowing Account of the Reality of War
Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland aim to recreate reality through cinema. But is such a thing possible?
Given his extensive background in science fiction, writer and director Alex Garland’s somewhat recent transition to stark, realist cinema remains surprising. While his sci-fi works have always been closely connected to problems which impact our everyday realities — Ex Machina studies control and gender, Annihilation questions identity, 28 Days Later questions authority and so on — Garland’s works are often so blatant in their use of science-fiction as metaphor that they feel somewhat ineffective, difficult to be absorbed by because of Garland’s tendency to prioritise ideology above storytelling (or, alternatively, by his poor marriage of the two). While I haven’t yet seen last year’s Civil War, a film that sounds intriguing if flawed from all I have read on it, Garland’s work generally disinterests me.
That is until, while reading good.film’s recent review of Warfare, I realise that I had to see it (and booked a next-day ticket within an hour!). Garland’s latest film, co-written and co-directed with ex-Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, is an effort to take a real event and to commit it to film in as honest and direct a way as possible. One of the arguments which…
