markgorman

This is a gem.

It's not done good box office but may find its place on streaming channels. It won the audience award at Sundance and I can see why because it's the very essence of laugh out loud funny, coupled with truly British feel good.

Executive-produced by most of its cast including stars and writers Tim Key, and Tom Basden, who also wrote and performed the music - a critical role because its about an old Folk Rock duo - Carey Mulligan and director James Griffiths (Bad Sisters).

It's based on a 2007 short (by the same team) and tells the full story of how the aforementioned duo (Mulligan and Baden - called McGwyer and Mortimer) find themselves on a remote Welsh Island playing a gig for a reclusive Lottery winner - Tim Key as Charles.

Key has a ball as the slightly eccentric loner who simply worships McGwyer and Mortimer who had split up a decade earlier because the relationship stepped beyond the music itself.

He's got money to burn and nothing to do so he can fancily fund a one night only reunion. Needless to say not all goes to plan.

The chemistry between the three principal characters is superb: Kooky Charles, curmudgeonly McGwyer and wistful Morrison. Each riff off the other in unexpected ways and the whole is most certainly greater even than its excellent sum of parts.

In essence it's a movie about loneliness. Charles is single and lost in his life. McGwyer, too, is lost in his career and aggressively trying to feed his ego, having essentially 'sold-out'.

Only Morrison (Mulligan) has a sense of balance in her life and carries off her part beautifully and sympathetically.

It's genuinely uproariously funny in places and genuinely touching in others and adds up to a glorious 90 minutes in the cinema that we shared with 6 others. Shame.

My love of A24 movies is poorly disguised on these pages and every year a bunch of their movies reach our screens. Every time I approach the cinema with great anticipation. Two of my favourite A24's are by Alex Garland; Ex-Machina and Civil War (although it has a bit of a daft ending). So the fact that Garland had directed and co-written this from the memories of a troop of Navy Seals that had been on operations in an al-Qaeda-controlled area of Iraq's Ramadi Province in November 2006.

The co-writer, Ray Mendoza, was one of the team and lost his leg in combat.

It's shot in a hyper real way, and feels kind of improvised, but clearly can't be because the action is so terrifyingly real and ultra-controlled. I believe Garland wouldn't allow any untruths or misremembered hyperbole into the story so each scene had to be corroborated by the Navy SEAL unit before it could make it into the script.

In a movie that's acted pitch-perfectly it's a little odd that it's not the acting that resonates, even though they are so real and believable, almost docu-drama. I mean, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, has previous, he's not an unknown, although I haven't personally seen any of his earlier work, neither is Michael Gandolfini. But I did recognise British actor Will Poulter who has a very distinctive face.

So, this isn't a bunch of unknowns, but it feels like it is (oLike Band of Brothers did) but mainly because they are buried in combat gear throughout, and later caked in 'stoor' (a Scottish word for muck, which is a Scottish word for grime) and blood.

This movie is truly spectacular, not in a Marvel-esque way, in a human condition way, like the one take dramas that have become fashionable of late you become immersed in a situation that has quickly gone wrong. It opens brilliantly with the 'boys' enjoying Erick Pryde's full on 'let's get physical' Call on Me booty video. All joy and leering and sort of innocent. The wide shot of the cast as they enjoy this sexist R and R is brilliant. Boys will be boys, eh?

We then cut to the SEALS on manoeuvres as they take over, at night, an occupied family home to gain a strategic sniping point, but quickly become spotted and surrounded and laid siege upon (in a way like John Carpenter's majestic Assault on Precinct 19).

As a viewer we are thrust into the centre of this quickly unravelling horror show. It's scarier than 9/10 horror films, let me tell you. At times you can barely breathe as the tension mounts, the stakes rise, the ops become unpredictable. Maybe they'll be sacrificed because to save them can only lead to a greater body count, maybe they'll heroically make it out alive. That's me post-rationalising because, at the time, I was simply swept along on a sea of action that's more realistic than pretty much any war movie I've seen.

Maybe it has echoes of Kubrick's Full Metal jacket in that it feels so authentic, but it's scarier. It doesn't have the plotting of Apocalypse now, but it sure as hell feels like the most tense moments of that movie, especially around Kurtz's military base in the jungle. It feels authentic like Hurt Locker, but dialled up. It has the tension of Dunkirk, but dialled up.

The sound design is terrifyingly brilliant. Like another A24 movie, Zone of Interest, which would also be a lesser movie without the quality of sound it gives us, although Warfare is in stark contrast to that masterpiece which is all muted and implied. Here it's full throttle. Volume at 11.

I've read some of the criticism of the movie as being plotless and even boring as the initial moments feature little to no action and not much dialogue, but this is simply done to capture the mundanity of war and the highs and lows that happen in battle. It creates a broodingly creative tension that is colossal. It's obvious that it's not gonna last, but Garland has the guile to hold his nerve, draw out the maximum moment of impact until we're almost past expecting it, then BOOM, game on.

This is a truly great movie. Garland's best. It doesn't take sides really, it doesn't wring its hands about the futility of war or critique Al Qaeda.

It just, is. Make your own mind up.

Outstanding.