A year after Alex Garland stirred the American political pot with his dystopian drama “Civil War,” the British director introduced a different kind of combat movie to an audience of U.S. veterans on Wednesday night in Hollywood.
A real-time account of a harrowing 2006 mission in Iraq, the film from Garland and co-director Ray Mendoza screened for the first time at the American Legion Post 43 – a legendary VA house on Highland Ave. erected in 1919 , built by WWI vets and their supporters entering the motion picture business.
Mendoza participated in and survived the operation at the center of “Warfare,” which follows 13 Navy SEALs holed up in an apartment building in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. A meticulous on-screen recreation of their mission recruited some of the most promising young talent in Hollywood for its ensemble cast, including Charles Melton, “Reservation Dogs” breakout D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Kit Connor, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis and Michael Gandolfini.
“This hasn’t been Hollywood-ed up,” said Justin Garza, a filmmaker from the Warrior Heritage Foundation who introduced the film. Indeed, a key differentiator “Warfare” can boast in its genre is that it builds tension, emotion and impossible stakes in 95 concurrent minutes – even when its soldiers are swatting away flies, chewing dip or urinating in plastic bottles.
“We met doing ‘Civil War,’ and he’s a super-fast learner. But one of the most interesting things about him is that he’s an incredible teacher,” Garland said at a post-screening Q&A of his partner Mendoza. “I saw him not just teaching [our actors] and others how to handle weapons, but how to act. How to really inhabit something. This film is a product of honesty — it’s unfiltered, unflinching and just truthful.”
Sparing any spoilers, the SEAL team puttering around this apartment building – where an Iraqi family sits in terror alongside the troops – soon finds themselves subject to a significant enemy attack. The mechanics of extraction in “Warfare” captivated the American Legion crowd. There is no glamour in “Warfare,” but the precision of its choreography and the consequences of even the smallest on-screen decisions landed well in the house.
“It’s rare as an actor, when you you’re a part of something that changes your life for the good. It changes your perspective on a lot of different things. I think I grew a lot as an individual and became a better person because of the guys that were part of this,” noted Melton, marking his first movie role after his 2023 run for the Oscar in Todd Haynes’ “May December.”
Melton revealed that he and his supporting cast endured a 3-week military bootcamp to prepare for the film, and the end of which they all shaved their heads and got matching tattoos (the phrase “Call On Me,” referencing a rare moment of levity in the film).
“Warfare” does not carry the typical “based upon” or “inspired by a true story” tag in its marketing materials. Instead, it yells in bold, “Everything is based on memory.” Opening April 11, the film was dedicated to one of the SEALs extracted in the 2006 mission, Elliot Miller, who was in attendance on Wednesday.
