Is 'Warfare' the most brutally honest war film ever made, or just two hours of misery with no point?

• AK

  Avery K.4h ago

  Watched it with my dad who's a Vietnam vet. He didn't say a single word for about 20 minutes after it ended. Then he said 'yeah.' That's it. Just 'yeah.' I think that's the review.

  231Reply
• Z

  Zara23h ago

  my brother did two tours in iraq and he said it was the first time a movie made him feel like the people who made it actually understood what it felt like. that alone makes it worth existing

  203Reply
• EL

  Elena L.5h ago

  its based on a real event and the survivors helped make the film. so all the people saying 'there's no point' are kind of saying these real men's experiences had no point. think about that

  188Reply
• CS

  Casey S.1d ago

  I walked out of that screening genuinely shaking. Not in a 'wow great movie' way. In a 'I need to sit on a curb for ten minutes' way. That's not nothing. That's actually everything.

  187Reply
• Z

  Zara11h ago

  i keep seeing people online say it glorifies the military and i genuinely cannot fathom what movie they watched. there is nothing glorified in this film. nothing. it is the opposite of a recruitment poster

  178Reply
• PR

  Priya R.8h ago

  I went in wanting to love it and came out respecting it. Those are different things. It's the kind of film I'm glad exists but never want to watch again, which might actually be the highest compliment you can give a war movie.

  162Reply
• N

  Nina20h ago

  The lack of a traditional narrative IS the point. War doesn't have a three-act structure. It doesn't have a hero's journey. Men die randomly and senselessly and then more men try to keep going. The film is formally radical precisely because it refuses to comfort you.

  156Reply
• N

  Noah4h ago

  It's the best film I've seen this year and it's not particularly close. But I also think 'is it a masterpiece' is the wrong question. It's a necessary film. Whether it's perfect is irrelevant.

  149Reply
• A

  Avery12h ago

  the thing that destroyed me was how mundane some of the conversations are while everything is falling apart around them. talking about food. joking. that's exactly how humans cope and seeing it rendered that precisely on screen is stunning

  145Reply
• J2

  Jamie 2110h ago

  Can we be honest that A24 has trained a generation of film Twitter to call anything bleak and slow a masterpiece? This movie is the emperor's new clothes and nobody wants to say it.

  143Reply
• ML

  Morgan L.9h ago

  I have a very low tolerance for war content since a family loss and I still felt compelled to watch it. Something about knowing it was real testimony that made it feel like a moral obligation. That's unusual for a film to create that feeling.

  137Reply
• H

  Hana13h ago

  The sound design alone deserves every award going. I was in a normal multiplex and people around me were visibly flinching. You could feel the concussive blasts in your sternum. Pure cinema.

  134Reply
• P

  Priya11h ago

  the cinematography is so specific and physical that i found myself leaning back in my seat unconsciously to get away from whatever was happening on screen. can't remember the last film that made my body do something involuntarily like that

  127Reply
• PL

  Priya L.5h ago

  war movies that actually depict war as hell are politically important right now. with multiple active conflicts being sanitized for public consumption this kind of filmmaking is almost an act of resistance

  119Reply
• R

  Ravi8h ago

  Why does a film HAVE to mean something extra beyond documenting what happened? The event itself is meaningful. The men who were there are meaningful. Why does Hollywood have to gift-wrap it for you?

  116Reply
• K

  Kofi14h ago

  people saying this film has no point have clearly never read a single piece of literature about wwi or vietnam. sometimes the point IS the pointlessness. that's literally what makes it anti-war

  112Reply
• M

  Morgan11h ago

  It's not the director's job to relitigate geopolitics in every frame. The soldiers on the ground didn't have that luxury either. The film is about THEIR experience, not Dick Cheney's press conferences.

  109Reply
• M

  Marco6h ago

  Saving Private Ryan was also 'just misery' by this logic and now we consider it a classic. Every generation has to fight critics who want war movies to be tidy.

  102Reply
• L

  Liam12h ago

  I'm a filmmaker and honestly the restraint here is almost offensive in how brilliant it is. No score telling you how to feel. No heroic slow-motion. Just consequence after consequence. This is what courage looks like behind a camera.

  98Reply
• N

  Noah7h ago

  The people calling it 'misery with no point' probably also thought Dunkirk was 'just an action movie.' Some audiences are allergic to films that don't explain their own themes out loud.

  94Reply
• D2

  Diego 219h ago

  Come and See comparison is insane lmao. Klimov's film is a poetic nightmare with a complete emotional arc and a devastating finale that means something. Warfare is a Wikipedia article you watch.

  93Reply
• M_

  Marco _x18h ago

  I fell asleep. Twice. Not because I'm shallow but because without any narrative tension or character development there's nothing to anchor you emotionally. Chaos without meaning is just chaos.

  89Reply
• AS

  Avery S.4h ago

  Hard disagree that Saving Private Ryan is comparable. Ryan has the most conventional Hollywood structure imaginable — it just has a brutal opening. Warfare commits completely to its formal experiment from minute one to the last.

  88Reply
• D

  Diego7h ago

  The Iraq War is still politically radioactive and making a film about it that doesn't try to deliver a 'message' either way is actually the bravest political statement of all. Refusing to adjudicate is itself a choice.

  84Reply
• MB

  Marco B.10h ago

  I study film and I'll say confidently: this is the most formally innovative mainstream war film since Come and See. That's not hype. That's just accurate.

  77Reply
• L

  Liam8h ago

  To the person above — Hereditary, Moonlight, Everything Everywhere — A24 has earned the benefit of the doubt ten times over. 'It's overhyped because it's A24' is just as lazy as automatically praising something because it's A24.

  76Reply
• N

  Nina5h ago

  disagree — refusing to take a stance on a war built on proven lies and faulty intelligence is not brave neutrality its cowardice wearing a prestige costume

  71Reply
• R

  Riley8h ago

  The performances are incredible but I genuinely couldn't tell half the characters apart for the first 40 minutes and I think that's a real problem. You can argue it's intentional but it makes emotional investment harder not easier.

  67Reply
• I

  Iris3h ago

  That's actually wrong — the choice of what to include and exclude from a real-time recreation is deeply artistic. Every cut is an editorial statement. Documentary and fiction filmmaking share more tools than film bros want to admit.

  66Reply
• L_

  Leo _x5h ago

  ngl the fact that it's already doing real numbers at the box office and not just in arthouse circles is the most surprising thing to me. apparently audiences are hungrier for this kind of thing than the studios think

  61Reply
• J

  Jordan6h ago

  genuinely think this film will be used in schools in 20 years the same way they showed platoon to my generation. it's that kind of document

  58Reply
• P

  Priya3h ago

  I actually think it's TOO honest. Cinema has always served a function of making horror bearable through narrative distance. Strip that away completely and you're not making art, you're making a trauma simulation. Those are different things.

  54Reply
• N

  Nina6h ago

  Fun fact: the real-time approach actually makes this less 'artistic' not more. It's closer to documentary filmmaking than narrative cinema. I'm not sure that's what people mean when they call it innovative.

  43Reply
• NT

  Nina T.8h ago

  Thought it was fine. Good performances, technically impressive. Didn't change my life or my politics. Sometimes a movie is just a movie and that's okay.

  38Reply

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