Corby Anderson

Disappointing film, unfortunately. I was as eager as can be for the release of Warfare. I’m an avid fan of military films, study the genre, keep a standards chart in my head that take into account all aspects of a film and compare them to the gold standards of the genre. I read somewhere that Warfare might be the best war film ever made, so I arrived pumped! Left shaking my head though. To me, there were failures on multiple levels. Casting, writing, directing and just the story itself, which in this telling comes off as inconsequential or picked completely free of any motivating detail other than individual survival. My biggest issue is that it seems like a bunch of actors cosplaying Marines. This is particularly damning in that the filmmaker is one of those characters. It’s his real story. Which came to light while he worked as technical advisor on Civil War. So, essentially; failure to convincingly ready these actors for their parts. Maybe im wrong, but I just don’t buy that these guys are SEALs. They don’t move, talk, react or buck up like SEAL’s I’ve seen or read about. Certainly they are all afffected severely by what transpires, which would affect behavior, but basically, my understanding is that SEAL teams are so rigorously trained that movement, communication, decision making, first aid and lethal force are all so second nature that even a massive casualty hit to a team leaves those remaining to function as trained.