I'm worried about Alex Garland. After creating some of my favorite movies of all time (28 Days Later, Ex Machina, Annihilation, hell, I'll say it -- Men) he seems to have gone into some weird military fascination phase. Civil War was a very terrible film that attempted to drain politics from an inherently political topic. Now, with Warfare, we go micro instead of macro and see a highly forensic examination of a single battle during the U.S. occupation of Ramadi in Iraq. Are my words too biased? Because a squad of U.S. troops literally goes into an Iraqi home to take it over for a few hours to gather intelligence. (The civilians are kept in a bedroom, including children.)
It almost works as an attempt at a "neutral" examination of combat -- the stress, the suffering, the unknown.
Garland blows this all up (ahem) in the credits, where the actual soldiers involved are brought in for cheery, jock-y, fist-bump-y photos. This actually happened, man!
A lone Iraqi woman, the mother of the children who had been taken hostage, gets to say "Why? Why?" but doesn't really get to speak, because she's the enemy of course, just one who got really lucky. An expendable NPC in the true world of American military exceptionalism.
Hard to believe, but this is worse than Civil War. Is this some kind of mid-life crisis for Garland?
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