Warfare

Very mixed feelings about this. It’s very ‘watchable’ - it’s tightly shot, well-paced (which you would expect given almost the entire film takes place in real-time) with fantastic sound design and solid performances. However, it’s stripped back of any characterisation and you don’t end the film understanding more about anyone in it than you did at the start. It boils down to a very one-sided story about ‘American good guys’ vs ‘faceless bad guys’. There is no exploration of the wider conflict, or the perspectives of the people involved in it. This is where I found the film most troubling. You could argue it doesn’t (for the most part) outwardly celebrate American intervention in the Middle East, but it certainly seems to condone it. If you want to watch a film that will keep you engaged for 90 mins, and you’re ok not drawing any meaning from it, then this is worth a watch. If you want a film that has something new to say about the war in Iraq (or war in general) then give this a miss.