Jakarta. English filmmaker Alex Garland is back with another movie that aims to capture the horrors of war. Garland has now teamed up with Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza to bring the latter’s personal experiences of a surveillance mission gone wrong to the big screen. 

"Warfare" revolves around a Navy SEAL platoon going on a surveillance mission that will eventually go south. The movie stays away from dealing with the political aspect of the war. For roughly an hour and a half, the film zeroes in on the soldiers on the ground and their emotions without touching their backstory. Even so, the audience can surprisingly still get a sense of the platoon members’ personalities from their small interactions. The dialogue does not go beyond the military men coordinating their positions and strategizing, but again, the lines still feel natural. “Warfare” is also set, almost entirely, in one location -- a multi-story house belonging to a local family from which the platoon monitors a neighborhood market. 

“Warfare” actually starts happy with the platoon watching the music video of Eric Prydz’s “Call on Me”. And that will be the only song that will be playing in this film. It is as if the Garland-Mendoza duo wants the audience’s ears to listen to nothing but the sounds of war: the explosives, firefight, the panic in the soldiers’ voices, and their heavy breathing, all to immerse the audience in the combat. And this trick worked like a charm, because I, too, felt like I was among the platoon members.

Acting-wise, most, if not all, actors in the movie have done a good job. The cast mainly encompasses up-and-coming stars such as Will Poulter, Charles Melton, and Kit Connor. However, Joseph Quinn, who plays the leading petty officer Sam, deserves special mention. Sam gets severely injured later in the movie after an explosive device detonates. I could feel the pain when he let out very raw screams when I watched the film at a recent screener. 

“Warfare” will soon hit Indonesian theaters.