Starring: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton
Distributor: A24
Runtime: 95 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone MSC
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A platoon of Navy SEALs embark on a dangerous mission in Ramadi, Iraq, with the chaos and brotherhood of war retold through their memories of the event.
Ultimately, this is a grim film. Many audiences will find some sequences unbearable to watch. But, this is a film of warfare. The action of the film takes place over an evening and morning, with the morning action seemingly taking place in real time. It is Iraq, 2006, three years after the American invasion. There are hostile Iraqis ready to attack and serve as snipers against the Americans. And there are ordinary Iraqis, seen going about their ordinary business in the streets, shops, chatting . . . And there are the victims of the action, homes taken over for confronting the enemy, homes destroyed.
The film, based on memories, was co-written and co-directed by Ray Mendoza. The film notes at the opening that this is a version of memories rather than an objective study of what happened in the mission. In the film, Mendoza is the radio operator, whose job is important for keeping the soldiers in contact, for surveillance, and for final rescue details. Mendoza is working with screenwriter and director, Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men) who startled many audiences with his imaginative version of conflict within the United States, Civil War.
The American cast, although the lead is Canadian and several significant actors are British (many of them familiar from films and from television series), recreate the camaraderie of the group. The film opens with a moment of shock for the audience with close-ups of an aerobics TV program, the group together, a lot of ogling, commentary, the suggestion of boys being boys…
But, the cast went through several weeks boot camp, training in methods of warfare, but also the behaviour of soldiers under stress, rehearsing not only the action sequences but the collaboration of the men in moments of waiting, in moments of tension.
Audiences will be intrigued by the discipline and the manoeuvres for the men to get from their headquarters to occupy a home in the street, opposite a building which is under suspicion. Then there is the waiting, for something to happen, for someone to shoot, for more information to come from headquarters. Audiences share these moments of nothing happening, time passing, yet having to be on the ready.
The action sequences are vivid, but best described by the word, visceral (or, perhaps, gut-churning), for the men’s experience as well as for the audience’s experience: snipers, response, mistakes made, men wounded, calls to evacuate the wounded, explosions, and, another warning about the graphic close-ups of injured and dead men, listening to their screams, the pain, the cry for morphine, just the unbearable pain of being carried, the rescue.
So, in no way an entertaining movie. Rather, an intense drama, the filmmakers’ serious attempt to immerse its audience in both the calm and the intense death reality of warfare.
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