Let me just be honest with you all that this movie got me so angry until I got to the middle part where everything started making sense. I’ve watched a lot of war movies, and most of them showed the perfect side of the military: how strategic they always are. But this movie? Very different and raw. And when I checked, it was made based on the memories of someone (Ray Mendoza) who actually lived it.
About the movie
The movie stars Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Will Poulter, and others as American Navy SEALs in Iraq who hijacked a house, held the owners hostage, and set up their operations for surveillance. While they were spying on the activities of the people, they got attacked, leaving some of them injured.
With how things got, they had no option but to evacuate the premises, and through that, more personnel got injured badly. They later had to call for backup from their colleagues at a different location to come and help them escape.
My thoughts
Listen, in the beginning I refused to believe these men were real actors because they made a lot of mistakes. But then I found out the movie was trying to tell the raw story of what goes on on warfields. People getting injured, trained soldiers making mistakes, others running into doors, people forgetting where they left their guns, a whole lot.
Normally when we watch war movies, we see strategic and tactical plans from soldiers being effective, but this movie is different. The way the soldiers even moved will make you question a lot of things, but then again, the whole point of the movie is to tell us how you could forget your training the moment you’re on the battlefield. The moment you realize you have to find a way to survive, it’s almost as if common sense has just left you and you’re just filled with emotions as your life flashes before your eyes.
The storyline actually got me very confused for a bit. How can you go and hijack someone’s house for your operations, hold them as hostages, and not expect a retaliation from the community? If this was something they did in real life, then there are a lot of question marks on it. You know what? Maybe I am the one not getting it, and if that’s the case, I’m definitely open to any explanations someone may have about the movie.
One thing they did well with was recreating the true feelings behind those brave eyes of the soldiers. They did well to show us how scared and clumsy soldiers become when they are facing death on the war field, especially when they have the will to live. And that’s something I really liked about the movie, even though I wanted to see it from the attackers’ point of view too.
My Rating
I’ve watched a lot of war movies that made me stand and clap in the end, but this made me very sad and angry. I was just wishing the movie would come to an end, not in a bad way. It was hitting me that no matter how well trained soldiers are, they are also humans with blood running through their veins and very prone to mistakes: the very thing that got them into the war in the first place. I’ll leave Warfare at 6/10.
Images are from IMDb
