‘Warfare’ aims to be the most authentic Iraq War film yet

A who’s who of red-hot talent including Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton and Will Poulter enlisted for Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s movie. They take us inside their training, tell us what Hollywood gets wrong about war, and discuss their enduring bond.

“Warfare,” the new film co-directed by Alex Garland (“Civil War,” “Ex Machina”) and former US Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, knows it’s going to give audiences a rough ride, so it starts off with a laugh. The nostalgic throbs of Eric Prydz’s 2004 hit “Call on Me” rise through the theater before it’s infamous video – a crotch-thrusting pastiche of John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis’s antics in 1985’s “Perfect” – appears on screen. (In IMAX, it’s quite something.) We’re seeing what a SEAL team is watching on a laptop screen at a military barracks near Baghdad. Suffice to say, they’re into it. These men, barely out of childhood, could be spring breakers if not for the fatigues and rifles. They go wild when the bass drops. The next time we hear a boom, it won’t be such fun. Culled from the memories of Mendoza and his former unit, “Warfare” is a taught retelling of a mission gone sideways during the Iraq War in 2006. Mendoza’s team was engaged in a surveillance mission in Ramadi when the house they were occupying came under attack, throwing the team into a fight for survival without the usual backup. The movie stars a Young Hollywood who’s who of internet boyfriends (Charles Melton, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Kit Connor, Noah Centineo and more) including “Reservation Dogs”’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai as Mendoza. But the film has no time for matinee idols or Hollywood heroism, casting them as highly competent cogs in a machine that prizes teamwork over individual valor. Garland and Mendoza, who met when the latter consulted on 2024’s “Civil War,” thrashed out a framework for the script, before interviewing members of the unit to flesh out the details.