I say this as a compliment and not as a criticism, I wanted it to end.

| Apr 25, 2025

Warfare, by Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza, is the most forceful and unflinching depiction of combat since Edward Berger’s 2023 Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s also one of the boldest and most formally daring.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 21, 2025

While conventional entertainment value may not be the film’s strength, Garland and Mendoza have taken some impressive risks in throwing many of the rules of drama out the window.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 19, 2025

You could condense the story into a sentence, but Garland and Mendoza have such a taut hold on the material, seconds take on the drama of epics.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 17, 2025

Many will retain understandable uneasiness about the project, but few could deny the technical brilliance and dedication to an austere brief. An essential watch. Though maybe just the once.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 16, 2025

What if you stripped away all the hooky plotting typical of military dramas, and just put an unembellished skirmish from a real war on-screen? Would it still work as cinema? The answer is yes.

| Apr 15, 2025

Together, Garland's virtuosity and Mendoza's first-hand experience create a masterful technical achievement that is, more important, emotionally harrowing.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 15, 2025

If a movie can be elegant and brutal at once, this one is.

| Apr 14, 2025

But by choosing to skip over such traditional narrative strategies as character differentiation... the filmmakers leave out an element that is crucial to the viewer’s engagement.

| Apr 14, 2025

While it's admirable Mendoza and Garland stitch together this agonizing portrait of the perils of war, its demands on young soldiers, and the merciless reality of combat, I was unsure how to feel about it.

| Apr 14, 2025

Undeniably one of the most immersive and visceral war movies ever made. I was dazzled by the cinematic craftsmanship and marveled at the displays of brotherhood, but was also left utterly shattered by the reality of modern warfare.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 12, 2025

The result is a film that’s effective but hard to recommend. Is it well made? Incredibly. Is it strongly acted? Indeed... Should you rush to the theater? That depends. It will undoubtedly make you feel awful … but that’s also sort of the point.

| Apr 11, 2025

A nerve-wracking jolt to the system, though one that is all but devoid of political context. The film's not really like most Hollywood war movies... Warfare is just warfare, calibrated as a cinematic show-of-force.

| Apr 11, 2025

It’s understandable that war causes filmmakers to take sides; "Warfare” is a triumphant example of how a war movie can leave you breathless with awe when it doesn’t.

| Apr 11, 2025

The filmmakers do achieve what feels like genuine authenticity in their depictions of combat, both when it comes to direct engagements and the long, uncertain periods of standing around and waiting between such engagements.

| Apr 11, 2025

“Warfare” is a viscerally impressive work. Your body feels it. But you may come away from it wondering what the larger point is, other than the fact that it happened to someone.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 11, 2025

The only agenda in Warfare, in other words, is to give you a sense of not just what happened but how everything felt while it was happening. A tall order, to be sure, but one that Garland, Mendoza, their cast and the crew pull off shockingly well.

| Apr 10, 2025

A taut and terrifying portrait of courage under fire.

| Apr 10, 2025

It is, rather, a purposely sad, angry movie, and as much a lament as a warning.

| Apr 10, 2025

“Warfare’s” mission, should audiences choose to accept it, is 95 minutes of tension and occasional release without conventional catharsis or hooyah triumphalism.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 10, 2025