D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Joseph Quinn and Will Poulter in “Warfare.”
A24/Murray CloseCivil War filmmaker Alex Garland with another harrowing story of battle in Warfare.
Warfare opens in theaters in wide release on Friday. The film is co-directed by Garland and Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza, who helped Garland create the intense battle scenes for Civil War.
Per the film’s official summary, “Warfare embeds audiences with a platoon of American Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission gone wrong in insurgent territory.”
Rated R, Warfare stars Charles Melton, Will Poulter, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Michael Gandolfini and Kit Connor.
Civil War, of course, was a fictional story — albeit a frightening one — where Garland imagined a future dystopian United States where the country was divided into four warring factions.
Warfare, meanwhile, is based on a true story. The film’s summary calls Warfare “a visceral, boots-on-the-ground story of modern warfare and brotherhood, told like never before: in real-time and based on the memory of the people who lived it.”
As such, combat veteran Mendoza and his fellow Navy SEALs recalled their memorial from a dangerous SEALs mission in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006.
Ray Mendoza Says The Real-Time Presentation Was Pivotal In Telling The Story Of ‘Warfare’
For Ray Mendoza, the key to effectively telling the real-life story of the dangerous Navy SEALs’ 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq, was to depict the events in a real-time format.
“Doing this film minute by minute for an hour-and-a-half, I think helps us tell a really honest story. When you get into gunfights, there’s these battle rhythms that you start to recognize … people get tired,” Mendoza told Military in a March 31 interview.
“You can’t just run around, run and gun the whole time. People need rest. There’s just these pauses. They need water. They need more ammo, so there’s these lulls in the firefight,” Mendoza added. “I think in doing it [in] real-time, there’s these battle rhythms of a firefight, a tempo, peaks and valleys; however you want to describe it, it allows us to really depict it accurately.”
Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland at A24’s “Warfare” Los Angeles Premiere held at the Directors Guild of … More
Variety via Getty ImagesMendoza told Military that Warfare was recreated for and dedicated to his fellow Navy SEAL, Elliot Miller, who was critically wounded in the battle and is now retired.
“I did it for Elliott because Elliott doesn’t remember what happened that day,” Mendoza said.
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs) plays Mendoza in the film, while Cosmo Jarvis (Shōgun) plays Miller.
Warfare opens in theaters in wide release on Friday.
Read the full article here
