Someone once said the waiting of a thing makes for such sweet sorrow.
That is until the titular fire and thunder, shock and awe, descends.
Then comes the high-pitched screaming and a different bang out of waiting.
But that comes later, after a deep breath and a long plunge down.
Running at only 90 minutes, more than a third ofWarfares narrative is about the quiet.
Its literally the dirt beneath a fingernail.
Outside are evac tanks, which they called because theyre surrounded by insurgents.
It lasts just enough for you to clock every actors agonized face.
Then out they must go, and sure enough it turns out that the readiness is not always all.
Ad content continues below
Conversely, there is nothing thrilling in the traditional, adventurous sense aboutWarfare.
This is a movie told in real-time and with a visceral sense of chaos and confusion.
It binds them and seeks to bind the audience as well to the utter senselessness of its namesake.
The film will assuredly face many critiques in various corners of the internet for simply existing.
Some have already oddly condemned it as U.S. military propaganda, sight unseen.
Others will soon call it leftist or anti-war.
But its not really either.
Truthfully,Warfaredeliberately offers little in the way of a point-of-view.
This is not the jingoistic hero-worship of Clint Eastwood nor a Kathryn Bigelow lament.
Garland and Mendoza are content on not answering what probably can never be satisfactorily explained.
That will frustrate some viewers, but then so did the war.
More problematic may be the films absolute commitment to near anonymity of its soldiers.
Its subjectivity is so acute that it obscures what should have been a stronger emotional response.
Still, I cannot fully dismissWarfares effect as limited or fleeting.
Warfarepresents an immediate snapshot of a hellish moment of agony in a handful of lives.
Warfare opens on April 11.
Rating:
3.5 out of 5
