‘Warfare’ Shows the Visceral Brutality of Combat

MOVIE REVIEW by Navy SEAL Commander Dan O’Shea (ret)

Editor’s note: The newly released WARFARE follows a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs on a surveillance mission gone wrong in November 2006, during a battle against insurgents in Ramadi Province, Iraq. The film from A24 is based on true events. It unfolds in brutal detail, until the conclusion that leaves audiences sitting in silence at movie’s end. Navy SEAL Commander Dan O’Shea (ret) is an OEF and OIF veteran. He watched the movie on opening night. Here is his review.

Just watched the premiere of WARFARE, the most realistic account of a typical mission for a SEAL Platoon in Ramadi, Iraq circa 2006. The movie depicts less than 24 hours of combat but has the audience on the edge of their seats from the opening scene as the platoon inserts into a house to establish an observation position in the middle of the most dangerous city in the world during the height of the insurgency.

The tightly focused camera angles on the individual faces captures everything from Team Guy humor, to the mundane moments on security watch to the absolute terror of a post-blast IED catastrophe of death and severely wounded to “Troops in Contact.”

For every OIF veteran who served in Iraq and especially during the height of the insurgency and during the surge that finally turned the tide, WARFARE will be to the OIF Generation what Black Hawk Down was for Somalia vets.

WARFARE will be visceral reminder for SOF and Infantry who fought in Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, Tal Afar and the “Triangle of Death” between Baghdad and Al Hillah (Mahmudiya, Yusufiyah, Iskandariyah).

For other Americans, it will be a window into the brutality and the brotherhood of what the post 9/11 military generation experienced in war.

Dan O’Shea is an OEF and OIF Veteran.

WATCH the trailer for WARFARE.