From Apocalypse Now to Saving Private Ryan, war movies have given us some of the most brutally epic action scenes in film history. Warfare, by contrast, may be the smallest war film ever made – it takes place almost entirely in a single house – but the visuals and sound give it a huge impact.
Available to stream in 4K UHD with HDR on Amazon Prime Video in the UK or rent on Amazon for $9.99 in the US, Warfare is co-directed by Alex Garland and Iraq War veteran Ray Mendoza. It draws on Mendoza's experience to enfold you in a single brutal day in combat.
The film follows a Navy SEAL platoon as they creep into a civilian house in the dead of night, roust the shocked family out of their beds, and then get comfy watching the windows for anyone who might shoot at them.
That's about it, story-wise. The uniforms are filled by breakout stars from recent TV hits, including D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai from the excellent Reservation Dogs, Joseph Quinn from Stranger Things, Kit Connor from Heartstopper, and Cosmo Jarvis from Shogun.
The film also recruits hot young actors Will Poulter, Michael Gandolfini and Charles Melton.
But like Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Warfare tells us absolutely nothing about these young men, instead focusing exclusively on the present moment and their reactions to what's happening right that second.
Unlike the Nolan epic, or most other war movies, it doesn't try and present this particular moment as in any way significant.
There's no heroic rescue mission or daring commando strike, just a bunch of guys in a house. It certainly doesn't try to make any grand political point, unless you count the fact that it opens with American soldiers invading a family home with the words, "I like this house – I think we're gonna take it."
Primarily, Warfare takes aim at being as immersive as possible. The combination of boredom and nerve-shredding tension is painstakingly evoked by measured camera movement and clinically precise editing.
Long stretches of watchful silence are followed by unnerving moments of calm amid the chaos, during which the precise framing ratchets up the fear of what's unseen, as doors stand ajar and wispy curtains stir gently against the light.
When things go from explosively bad to gorily worse, the camera picks out sweaty, grimy and often bloody details of this claustrophobic location, trapping you right in the middle of this gut-wrenching situation.
The sound design is equally stark and impactful, as you might expect from a sound team including Ben Barker and Glenn Freemantle, who worked on the similarly masterful sound of Gravity.
There's muffled voices, floorboard creaks and a soldier's ragged breath add foreboding and unnerving atmosphere, before jet planes blast a show of force into your eardrums and gunfire and ricochets snap and pop all around.
Several sequences could be candidates for our list of the best Dolby Atmos movie scenes to test your home cinema surround sound system.
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