If war truly is hell, then why was Civil War so rad? Alex Garland’s divisive 2024 feature was taken to task for myriad offenses, from its lack of a forward-facing political agenda to a widespread omission of key details, but perhaps the most damning was its commitment to flair in the face of overwhelming atrocity. The film’s entry point, concerning a ragtag unit of wartime photo journalists, only compounded the issue, honing in on ethical depiction and pain-staking reportage in a film that was bending over backwards to provide some sizzle. Rather than being sent to movie jail for his sins of swagger, the writer/director returns to similar soil almost exactly one year later with Warfare, the titular melee only serving as the tip of the iceberg as far as comparable themes and narrative elements are concerned. At least this time he’s got company.

Ray Mendoza, a veteran who’s since become a battle coordinator on innumerable Hollywood projects, is here for backup, sharing both writing and directing credits with the aforementioned auteur. While the Academy’s voting body would be forced to slot their script into the Original Screenplay category, Warfare is more of an autobiographical adaptation, charting a mission gone awry for which Mendoza had a front row seat. He’s played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and flanked by a slew of industry up-and-comers (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, and Charles Melton among many more), all trapped inside a crumbling home amidst the 2006 bombardment of Ramadi. Unfurling over the course of a single day, Garland and Mendoza’s picture is loath to be distracted, attaching precious little clarifying exposition or enticing subplots as they witness their stars suffer and struggle to survive.

In other words, this is not a fun time at the flicks, and the De La Soul and Silver Apples needle drops that defined Civil War are nowhere to be heard. In their place is a soundtrack of gunfire that rattles the ear drums while in close proximity, and morphs into devious white noise when heard from a distance, the inversion here matching a similar turn around that’s happening thematically. Where last year’s Kirsten Dunst vehicle observed a band of characters hellbent on bringing truth to the fictional masses, Warfare sees Mendoza recreate a disastrous afternoon for a real world audience’s edification. Culling information from the now-filmmaker’s fellow infantry men, the movie proudly presents itself as being based exclusively from memory, which, needless to say, doesn’t adhere to traditional cinematic structures.

Not only does the film decline the architectural safety provided by following a single protagonist, it forgoes character development all together. An implicit result of using veracity as your north star, the dialogue on hand is almost exclusively technical, concerning the whereabouts of surrounding assailants and the order of operations in a way that will prove illegible to all but a sacred few. The cacophony of gunfire and explosions need no further explanation, and what Warfare lacks in mooring factors is more than made up for in visceral muscle. Even the goal on hand is impossible to parse; when you’re taking fire, it’s hard to break the fourth wall and elaborate on the why of it all.

The how and what are more interesting anyway, and while Garland has thankfully gotten much of the theatricality out of his system, his showmanship is impossible to erase. Opening with twenty minutes of near silence, Warfare has little trouble ratcheting up tension by simply hitting its marks, the encroaching, invisible threats tightening the screws in a way that doesn’t necessitate verbal explication. The ensuing tumult is truly staggering, the violence and carnage on display seering into your mind’s eye the moment they’re revealed, and where most military epics employ thrills and chills to get viewers’ blood pumping, this one uses a smaller scale to scald and scandalize. It’s still a testament to Garland’s power behind a camera, but his abilities amplify the movie this time around, rather than its creator’s vocational chops.

But not everything here is attuned to shock and awe. In fact, Warfare is surprisingly light on repetitious discharge, and welcomely compelled by its fallout. The amount of time spent attending to injured soldiers easily dwarfs the minutes that exist within the crosshairs, a humanist bent that extends to the movie’s interest in the local civilians whose lives are unwittingly imperiled. Just don’t mistake that for a moral compass; whatever bells and whistles Garland would have undoubtedly attached are sanded away by an undergirding fealty to accuracy, and those looking for a condemnation or validation of the war in Iraq will have to search elsewhere. This one only gives you the on-the-ground experience, with nothing on either side of the waylay.

Closing out with a quasi-where-are-they-now montage does undercut some of this evenhandedness, but it’s hard to blame Mendoza for a bit of valorization. It’s his story to tell, along with his comrades, and the potentially deceitful reasons behind their deployment shouldn’t negate their trauma. They collectively make for one hell of a symbiotic relationship with Garland, the former requiring the skills and name recognition to get this thing off the ground, the latter benefiting from some guardrails against his lesser impulses. For one half of the team, it’s an art installation interrogating the boundaries of proper storytelling, and for the other, it’s a plea to be seen and heard on the terms of lived experience. Call that under-baked or ill-conceived if you must, just don’t pretend that your nerve endings aren’t being fried for nearly 95 uninterrupted minutes.