Article with trailer:

https://taskandpurpose.com/cul...endoza-alex-garland/

Trailer only:

https://youtu.be/JER0Fkyy3tw

I love Garlands other stuff so I'm down. This appears atleast from what I've seen so far to have all the ingredients.

Looks Black Hawk Down(ish) in quality and intensity. I am no expert, but the weapons represented in the trailer look very accurate.

This is a A24 production, while they're the hot indie-film house on the scene...most of their movies are more psychological-thrillers or, deep genre type films. Given their background, will be interesting to see how they portray war..I'm sure they'll capture the grittiness but the dialogue could be problematic with characters embracing stereotypical archetypes.

THe trailer looks good, I am sure I'll see it.

Interesting that all the Navy SEALs in this film are wearing Army UCP camo...

SEALs in Iraq in 2006 are typically seen wearing 3 color DCU, since the digital AOR1 pattern wasn't yet adopted:





Though there are occasional shots of them wearing UCP in that time frame, so it's not technically incorrect, just uncommon:

Out in theaters today, to good reviews.

Anyone seen it yet? I'll be checking it out in the next week or two.

I've seen two reviews so far that describe this as something more akin to a slasher film than a war film, due to the stress, jump scares, tension, and gore.

Just got back. I need to process it a bit but its very good. Not over the top, the gore is realistic to whats happening I think the reports of jump scares are more because Garland builds some serious tension but I got more of a jump out of the previews. I recommend it.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Interesting that all the Navy SEALs in this film are wearing Army UCP camo...

Ray Mendoza addressed that in an interview which (of course) I can't find right now. Those were what he wore, at least during that particiur operation.

I'll be seeing it Tuesday.

Not a seal but if memory serves we were DCUs for the first tour in 2003 then started to see ACUs when the 82nd relieved us on our second tour which would have been 2006. I think the Marines had their desert pattern before that but it's been a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
Just got back. I need to process it a bit but its very good. Not over the top, the gore is realistic to whats happening I think the reports of jump scares are more because Garland builds some serious tension but I got more of a jump out of the previews. I recommend it.

So it's not trash like Civil War?

I actually like Civil War as well. If you tell me what you don't like about that, I can try to give you a comparison or idea of what you might not like.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
Not a seal but if memory serves we were DCUs for the first tour in 2003 then started to see ACUs when the 82nd relieved us on our second tour which would have been 2006. I think the Marines had their desert pattern before that but it's been a bit.

Yep. UCP was rolled out in 2005. MARPAT had first debuted in 2002.

So it's period correct, and there's photographic evidence of some real-life SEALs in the time frame wearing it too, along with the director's personal account. It's mostly just interesting that the Navy guys chose to wear Army-specific camo, especially considering the low opinion everyone seems to have had of the UCP pattern's effectiveness (or lack thereof). But it may have been an attempt by that SEAL units to prevent themselves from standing out from conventional Army soldiers to the eyes of the Iraqis.

"Hey, aim for the guys in the tan, not the gray. They're the special ones that are really fucking us up."

Kinda like the potentially apocryphal story from Afghanistan of the intercepted Taliban radio traffic discussing how they shouldn't engage groups of American soldiers who had beards, because those guys were too good. (Only special operations soldiers were able to grow beards.)

Or maybe they were simply being hard on uniforms and supply was slow to keep up, so they started using what was available.

If I had to guess, alot of things were being tried out around that time so maybe they were seeing how it worked in that environment.

I can say that ACU is weird in that its easy to see that something is there but hard to actually make it out in the woods. So kinda successful? I side w/ John Plaster, who said I'd rather be dark and wrong than light and wrong for camo, at least in the woods or jungle.

I dont have a ton of info on how ACU looked in the desert or city as it was coming in as we were going out but its lighter scheme may not have been that bad, in that particular instance, on paper atleast.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
I actually like Civil War as well. If you tell me what you don't like about that, I can try to give you a comparison or idea of what you might not like.

Critical Drinker nails a lot of the points, but the premise sounds like it was dreamed up by some Euro that only watches BBC News and every character is a drooling moron.

I appreciate the entertainment value in his video but I disagree with him. Nonetheless, that's a discussion for a different thread, and, if he's serious, that's what makes movies fun; we can all see the same thing and get something different.

In this case, I would say that the two movies are very different beyond the same director and advisor. Warfare is very based in reality with actual people as the basis for the charectors. As my understanding is that Mendoza created the movie for one of his friends who has little to no recollection of the incident, almost as a healing or a, hey heres what you missed while you were out, I would be very surprised and disappointed if anything was hollywooded up.

quote:

Originally posted by Anubismp:
Not a seal but if memory serves we were DCUs for the first tour in 2003 then started to see ACUs when the 82nd relieved us on our second tour which would have been 2006. I think the Marines had their desert pattern before that but it's been a bit.

Yes I can confirm that the Marines had the digital desert MARPAT uniforms in early 2003. I was deployed in Kuwait with the PA ANG and the 3rd MAW was at our airbase and they all had them.

They sent me there with 3 days notice in late February 2003 and I never even got a chance to get issued DCU's. Showed up in woodland BDU's and had to scrounge up some DCU's with no patches or nametapes for a while.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

Kinda like the potentially apocryphal story from Afghanistan of the intercepted Taliban radio traffic discussing how they shouldn't engage groups of American soldiers who had beards, because those guys were too good. (Only special operations soldiers were able to grow beards.)

I recall reading that in Gulf War 1 the Iraqis were especially afraid of anyone in green woodland camo (as many units were rushed there without getting desert unforms issued) as they were told these were the soldiers trained to fight the Russians.

I really want to see this. I’ve enjoyed everything else that Alex Garland has done.

Wow. Just wow.

This is the most accurate, most realistic, war movie ever made. That’s a bold claim but I 100% believe it.

People were crying in the theater. One guy threw up.

The actors were well trained. The guns and equipment were very authentic (20+ years later)

It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s an experience. Everyone sat in the theater after the credits rolled and no one got up. People just dealing with their emotions quietly and in their own way and processing what they just witnessed.

Fucking thumbs up. Must see.

(If you have Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD, maybe sit this one out) It’s extremely intense.

quote:

People were crying in the theater. One guy threw up.

That's a bit over the top...


I just watched it. Yes, it's intense and fairly gory. But not really any more so than a number of other realistically graphic war movies. It's on par with the Normandy portion of Saving Private Ryan, mixed with the surgery scene from Black Hawk Down. Perhaps a step up from something like 13 Hours or Lone Survivor.

It's also quite short. In and out in well under 2 hours, including the preceding commercials and previews. (Edit: The runtime of the film reflects the actual duration of the events depicted.)

Definitely worth watching/experiencing, but probably not something that you'd buy on BluRay to re-watch.

It's very realistic*, and not just in the props, tactics, and gore. More importantly, they didn't try to movie-fy it. There's no overarching plot. No movie star heroes. No music. No explanations. No character development in the traditional sense. You don't even know their names, for the most part. And you don't get to see anything other than what the SEALs see in their immediate vicinity (except for a couple drone video feeds).

Just a brief realistic film portrayal of a real life extended firefight that those guys actually experienced, based primarily on their own recollections. Basically a big budget documentary recreation/reenactment.


*The main area that jarred me for the lack of accuracy/realism is the "Bradleys" used in the film, which are actually mocked up British FV432s. But I won't hold that against them, because it's a relatively low budget film from a fairly small studio.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: RogueJSK,