Even if you don’t know his name, you know his face (or his eyebrows, at least). Will Poulter was Lee in 2007’s Son of Rambow, Kenny in We’re The Millers from 2013, and Adam Warlock in 2023’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, all excellent performances. Several roles for which he deserves the highest praise, however, are those from movies with no real widespread viewership. Warfare, released in 2025, is one of these movies.
Warfare is a gritty, engrossing look at the Iraq War, and has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This makes Warfare Poulter’s second-highest movie rating on the site, runner-up to Wild Bill with its 100% rating. Wild Bill and Warfare were both well-received by critics, but neither found large audiences. Warfare, in particular, was arguably Poulter’s best performance to date and deserves more attention.
‘Warfare’ Was Co-Written and Co-Directed by US Navy Veteran Ray Mendoza and Is Based on His Experiences
When Warfare begins, Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One is engaged in the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. Ray Mendoza, played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, is a Joint Terminal Attack Coordinator who arranges for air support. As fellow servicemen Eric Miller (Cosmo Jarvis), Tommy (Kit Connor), and Erik (Will Poulter), among others, attempt to secure their location, Miller is injured while grenades and an IED detonate around them.
The members of Alpha One take refuge in a house, but their position is too vulnerable to receive the support they need. Another platoon, Alpha Two, arrives, and leader Jake takes over for the beleaguered Erik. Miller, severely injured, and Sam (Joseph Quinn) are taken out of the area by tank, as the rest of Alpha One and Alpha Two are left to fight off insurgents until more help can arrive to evacuate them.
It’s difficult to relay the intensity of Warfare, but the real-time presentation of what it’s like to be in a war zone, to watch bombs explode, to see people die in an instant is beyond gripping. The pain and agony felt by the members of Alpha One and Alpha Two are as real as can possibly be presented on the big screen.
Mendoza and his co-writer, Alex Garland, drew from the former’s recollections and based every one of the characters in Warfare on an actual person with whom he fought. Testimonies of the platoon members form the crux of the movie, and it is dedicated to Miller (who lost a leg and verbal abilities as a result of his injuries).
Critics Praised ‘Warfare’ For Its Unconventional and Realistic Presentation of Combat
Warfare isn’t like many movies about war. It doesn’t incorporate downtime, it does little to make ware look anything other than what it is — tense, deadly, and chaotic. Headed up by a group of actors like Will Poulter, the extras in the movie were veterans, and everything is based on the recollections of men who were in Iraq in 2006. Co-writer Andrew Garland told The New York Times in April 2025,
“When you saw veterans, in effect, directed by a veteran, something came out of it, which was something that I hadn’t really seen in cinema…. It’s memory-based and it’s subjective. I don’t think we can say everything you see is true… but what we can say is everything here is honest.”
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This unique look at war was exactly what critics like Wendy Ide from The Guardian found so bold about Warfare. Ide acknowledged the difficulty Hollywood has had in telling stories about the Iraq War, but, for her, that is why Warfare is an important film:
This is a film about the bullet-strafed, boots-on-the-ground realities of war rather than the geopolitical gamesmanship behind it.
Will Poulter Was Initially Disappointed When He Heard About ‘Warfare’
In an interview with Cinemablend in April 2025, Will Poulter admitted,
“When I first got the opportunity to meet with Alex [Garland], I was so excited. And initially when I heard it was a war film, my heart slightly sunk just because I wasn’t necessarily that motivated to be part of a of a war film. Then when I heard the objective, which was to try and contribute to the canon of war films with something that was made devoid of Hollywood grammar, no score, no fictionalization, like a very literal, apolitical and, objective recreation of real events… I was all in and, yeah, I should have known about… I should have known that Alex Garland is too clever to do otherwise.”
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In the end, Poulter and his castmates found making Warfare to be “empowering” because, “Typically in film-making, you’re finding what’s most entertaining. The MO here was completely different. We were making sure we were aligned with the memories of the gentlemen who experienced this… it empowered us in what we were trying to do. Which was to tell the truth.”
Perhaps everything that is different about Warfare is why it was not a juggernaut at the box office. That said, it did make $33 million globally, but on a budget of $20 million, it’s not exactly a smash hit. However, as a movie that is admittedly “intense” (a word Poulter tried not to use when talking about it), Warfare may have been too honest for audiences. This might just be what makes Warfare such a must-see movie in Poulter’s opus of films.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
