Warfare

 Zero context, just enough narrative that even I could maybe squeeze it into a single paragraph, and no real characters to latch onto. 

 Warfare is a realistic, fly-on-the-wall, worst-day-in-the-life depiction of a squad of navy SEALs stuck in a fortress-like house deep in enemy territory in Iraq. They're there to provide sniper support to a nearby operation.

 Aside from a prologue showing the unit enjoying some R&R, and a nighttime raid to establish their outpost (a civilian house whose civilian inhabitants need to be pacified), most the film takes place mostly in real time; The first part involves a lot of tedium as the crew goes through the daily business of coordinating the operation, and a rising suspense as they realize the local jihadis are closing down on them. Then a grenade is thrown their way and just like that they are in a siege situation, with what seems like numberless, seldom-seen enemy combatants shooting at them from surrounding buildings.

 A disastrous attempt to evacuate leaves the crew reeling and in need of extraction; The second half of the movie is scored by screams as well as shots in what's probably the most raw, upsetting depiction of pain I've encountered in a semi-mainstream movie.

 This movie is damn near perfect for what it is. What it is, though, is hard to recommend: a dead serious, respectful, meticulous, reconstruction of a real-life combat scenario that does its best to put you in a brutal, modern siege situation. It was put together by co-director Ray Mendoza from the memories of both soldiers and civilians who were directly involved in the real operation (Mendoza himself was the comms officer, and is played by Bear himself D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai). Alex Garland co-directs.

 The cast of mostly young British (Cosmo Jarvis, Joseph Quinn, Will Poulter) actors acquits themselves well, although none of the roles are what you'd call an actorly showcase. The cinematography expertly supports the film's troop-level point of view, supplementing it with the occasional army drone shots.

 This is, I feel I need to underline, not a traditional depiction of, um, warfare. Prodigious amounts of munitions are burned through, but if someone is hit you can barely see it. Combat is portrayed more like brutal waves that wash over everyone involved, with the cameras trained constantly on the soldiers to reinforce how they have to make critical decisions based on fragmentary information and limited positional awareness. The feel is much, much closer to the horror genre than action, heightened by an exquisite sound design that hammers you with every possible permutation of gun report, bullet impact, or casing hitting the floor. There's no music, either; Warfare is scored by the rhythm of gunfire, the chatter of comms, and the near constant screams of the wounded. It's a unique, exhaustingly harrowing approach.

 The scope of the film neatly stops before politics ever come into it, but bringing the knowledge in that the war was waged under false pretenses is inescapable - and even the script, which studiously stays away from making any judgement, still shows its hand in the treatment of local friendlies and civilians. It supports the troops, not the war, you might say.