In the last week, I saw the movie Warfare, and I learned that someone who used to write here in the film section at The Reader died. Maddeningly, painfully, for the second time in less than a year, I find myself crafting something that is closer to a eulogy than it is a movie review. At least this one isn’t my hot take on an animated family film?
As I did when I wrote that Inside Out 2 review about John Heaston’s death, I promise, you will see how a generic war movie and my friend’s passing fit together.
Mason Shumaker loved movies. So, a little more than a decade ago, I asked him to write about them for me here. He was funny. Deeply hilarious, actually. His reviews often showed that. My favorite was when he would openly call me out in print or felt so strongly that he had to write about something I already wrote about. When he loved something that he saw, he was direct and genuine about it. He was always direct and genuine. I loved him for that, but I don’t think he knew it.
At a very bad time in my life, Mason saw me either as the person that I was previously or the person that I would one day be and not the person standing in front of him at that time. He did small, kind things then that meant more than he ever knew. I never told him. And now I can’t. Because life is beautiful and cruel in equal measures.
In the end, we are just collections of memories shaped like people. All we truly ever own is that which we remember.
Warfare is about an incident during the Iraq War retold through the memories of a Navy SEAL team. Its entire justification for its addition to the seemingly endless litany of war films is that it was crafted through the unit’s collective memory. It is redundant to every wartime reflection, in that it shows armed conflict to be stupid, senseless, and bad. It has nothing unique to say, really. But with its whole chest, it says “This is how a group of dudes in an awful situation remember that awful situation.”
It is weird how some memories can suddenly become sacred. A few weeks ago, thinking about the time Mason wrote a taunt in snow on my car without fessing up to it for weeks was just a silly thing that happened. Now, that incredibly mild prank is something I have to protect. I have to freeze it as best I can before the edges melt. I want to remember it perfectly.
Who knows how accurate Warfare is? Most of the dialogue is just Ray (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) barking out coordinates, Erik (Will Poulter) struggling to make rapid choices between bad options, and Sam (Joseph Quinn) screaming. Those are all probably varying degrees of what actually happened. It is unquestionable that the event itself, wherein several soldiers are maimed, began and ended somewhat near what was shown.
The tragedy of it all is pointless. And yes, I mean both things I’ve talked about here. They aren’t equal, I know. Mason is one person, and the Iraq War led to a simply astounding loss of life. But there are parallels. Warfare’s biggest takeaway, for better and worse, is “What was all of that for?” That feeling of wanting some kind of justification for something so painful, so stupidly sad, rings pretty true right now.
I want to be clear: Warfare is just okay. It is Blackhawk Down dressed in desert camouflage. It is not profound. But movies don’t have to be to hit you sometimes, right? The things we enjoy, the art and hobbies that we love, are just shared language. They are articulations that may otherwise go unspoken.
Mason loved movies. He loved many other things: dogs and making fun of terrible people, for example. But we probably talked about film the most. Warfare won’t be the movie I remember him by. Maybe that’s Mad Max: Fury Road or maybe it’s Free Fire, a movie that I don’t know that anybody else loved like he did. But Warfare is about the virtue of memory and about enduring random and tragic pain.
Seems about right.
I will hold onto memories of Mason. It is crushing that he is gone. Do me a favor, if you should feel so inclined, watch Free Fire and donate to the Nebraska Humane Society for him. And this one is nonnegotiable: Don’t put off telling every goddamn person that matters to you why they are important. Every. One. Of. Them.
Grade = B
Other Critical Voices to Consider
Molly Henery at The Blogging Banshee says “Warfare is one of the few military films that focuses solely on the fight for survival, rather than telling a hero’s story. It allows for a focus on the senselessness of the war these young men were thrust into, as well as how these military actions left innocent Iraqi citizens to clean up the mess left behind by the US.”
Courtney Small at Cinema Axis says “In sitting in the horror of conflict, Warfare offers a cold and grisly look at the disposable nature of war. While a fascinating and chilling film, one cannot help but wish Garland and Mendoza provided a little more insight into the men who they are celebrating, and the individuals whose lives they disrupted and discarded.”
Amy Nicholson at the L.A. Times says “Warfare wants to live in the dictionary shoehorned between war cry and war hawk. This short and gripping thriller nails its Oxford English definition — ‘the activity of fighting a war’ — while stripping away the clichés that have come to signify a Hollywood war movie.”