The film is a culmination of work done by two journalists, father-and-son team Mike and Carlos Boettcher, who followed troops on a dangerous mission into a notorious valley in Afghanistan. The film is designed as a way to honor the heroism and sacrifice made by soldiers.
The film is co-directed by David Salzberg and SMU alum Christian Tureaud, who decided to undertake the project three years ago when they attended a screening of The Perfect Game, a film they co-produced, at the 2011 Dallas International Film Festival.
That screening took place at the Angelika, so they wanted to premiere this film in Dallas to bring their involvement full circle. Tureaud credits Judd and Moser for elevating the film's profile.
Also performing at the premiere are Navy Seal-turned-singer-songwriter Pete Scobell, singing “The Ones I Stand Beside,” and composer Mike Trella, who wrote the score for the film. All performances are free and will take place outside the Angelika on the mezzanine stage.
The premiere of The Hornet's Nest is invitation-only, but the film opens at the Angelika on Friday, May 9, with the national release scheduled for May 23.
Wynonna Judd and her husband, Cactus Moser, perform an original song prior to the screening of The Hornet's Nest at the Angelika on May 5.
Photo by Kristin Barlowe
Wynonna Judd and her husband, Cactus Moser, perform an original song prior to the screening of The Hornet's Nest at the Angelika on May 5.
At this point in movie history, there are precious few ways to make a war film feel original. Every major American war, including the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been covered, and the “war is hell” idea has been featured in too many films to count. So for a film like the new Warfare to stand out, it needs to do something that other war films have not.
To say that it accomplishes that goal is an understatement. Set in Iraq in 2006, it follows a platoon of soldiers tasked with helping to gain control of the city of Ramadi, a hotbed of activity in the war at that time. But this is not a story of good triumphing over evil, nor one that tries to examine exactly what the U.S. military was trying to accomplish in the war. Instead, it’s just a story of a group of young men trying to do the job they’re asked to do, and what happens to them during that mission.
It presents as fact, with no judgment either way, that one squad of the platoon overtakes the home of two Iraqi families as part of the mission. An ensuing firefight pins the soldiers down with almost no way to escape, and subsequent rescue attempts by other squads result in multiple casualties. The bulk of the film focuses on how the shell-shocked and injured soldiers react to the situation in which they find themselves.
Written and directed by Alex Garland (Civil War) and Ray Mendoza, the film is based on the memories of Mendoza and his fellow soldiers of this exact situation they experienced. As such, the film does not attempt to add extra drama or even emphasize one character over another. In fact, the first 30-40 minutes of the film are relatively boring, as the squad relays information about their position to other, unseen people.
The men in the platoon are not exactly interchangeable with each other, but the way the film is structured, they’re essentially equals. It’s easy to tell who the leaders are, but those giving orders are not treated as more important to the film than those carrying them out. This is especially true when things go to hell, as each person goes from trying to fight to trying to survive, with their training coming into play in different ways.
The situation depicted in the film is somewhat mundane - it’s not some big battle or a turning point in the war - but the intensity with which Garland and Mendoza stage it makes it enormously impactful. They put the audience right in the thick of the carnage, and the horrific injuries inflicted on some of the men, as well as the seemingly never-ending screams of pain emanating from them, can be difficult to take.
The cast features a few actors who are starting to make names for themselves (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini), others who’ve had smaller impacts (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Evan Holtzman), and plenty of others who have yet to get their big breaks. Each of them does their job extremely well, which in this case means that they complement each other’s performances, with none of them overshadowing the others.
Warfare is not an overtly political film, and yet the politics of war are inextricable from the story it tells. Neither anti-war nor pro-war, it simply lays out the facts of one individual mission in a larger conflict, and each viewer will likely take away something different from the experience of watching it.
