What’s missing from Alex Garland’s Iraq movie Warfare? Context, motivation and, for the most part, Iraqis | Peter Beaumont

Alex Garland's film *Warfare* vividly re-enacts the 2006 Battle of Ramadi with a focus on authenticity, capturing the claustrophobic reality of urban warfare in Iraq. While it excels in depicting the sensory details and immediate violence of combat, the film falls short by neglecting broader context and character depth, leaving viewers without insight into soldiers' motivations or the war's impact on Iraqis. Beaumont critiques this narrow perspective, arguing that such an approach reduces the human complexity of war, rendering it merely an endurance test for American protagonists rather than a nuanced historical event.