As it turns out, you’ve been the target of a bait and switch. You come out of the theater realizing that your hunky idol had negligible screen time — at least you think so. Really, you couldn’t tell who was who for 78% of the movie. Whether or not you took anything from the film doesn’t matter. You’ve spent the cash to boost this movie’s opening weekend box office, helping to create a new ripple in its larger story. Hundreds of thousands of others will do the same, and the question of what they’ll take away from their experience could have an entirely different answer.
“Warfare,” the new film by Alex Garland, co-directed by Iraq war veteran Ray Mendoza, welcomes and refutes that ambiguity. When A24 released the first trailer for the film — which follows a single, horrific day in the lives of a platoon of Navy SEALs stationed in Ramadi in 2006 — the response was not exactly glowing. A brief scroll through the replies to the trailer on X will show people calling the movie “American war propaganda” and decrying the persistence of war movies in an age when nationalist military narratives have less sway over dwindling enlistment figures than ever.
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