FILM
WARFARE
ALEX GARLAND HEADS BACK TO A CONFLICT ZONE
FILMS, TV, BOOKS, GAMES - ALL THE BIG RELEASES, RATED
10 APRIL - 7 MAY 2025 | EDITED BY JOHN NUGENT
The SEALs move through hostile territory.
Navy SEAL Erik (Will Poulter) feels the strain
Soldiering on
Brothers in arms.
★★★★★
OUT 18 APRIL / CERT TBC / 95 MINS
DIRECTORS Alex Garland, Ray Mendoza
CAST D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn
PLOT 2006, Ramadi, Iraq. Seizing an apartment to surveil the area, a group of Navy SEALs find themselves bombarded by Al-Qaeda insurgents.
APPROPRIATELY, WARFARE BEGINS with a deafening assault, as Eric Prydz’s horny 2004 aerobics video for ‘Call On Me’ fills the screen, its sweaty, hormonal hardbodies lunging and lurching. We wonder what, in 2025, we’ve done to deserve this, before the film cuts to a group of grinning, hollering young soldiers watching the video —a tight-knit unit getting their rocks off. These are the young men we’re going to be spending the next hour-anda-half with; this, of all things, is the calm before the storm.