This weekend, the incredible new action Iraq war film Warfare hits cinemas.
Set over a few hours in November 2006, the Navy SEALs find themselves under attack with seriously injured members of their platoon in desperate need of rescue.
The true story is co-directed by Alex Garland and vet Ray Mendoza, who was there and is portrayed in the film.
During the shoot, other real-life Navy SEALs were on set to help guide the actors playing them in the grave situation that left some with life-changing injuries.
Shogun star Cosmo Jarvis plays sniper Elliott Miller and opened up on the impact of having the man himself so nearby when portraying him in Warfare.
The Daily Express was in attendance at a special BFI IMAX screening of Warfare, with a Q&A held beforehand with Garland and Jarvis.
Garland shared: “I think it’s interesting for the audience to consider that while Cosmo is playing Elliott, the real Elliott is 6, 7, 8 feet away from him in his wheelchair, observing. And that creates an extraordinary, strange blurring of states in a house that is very precisely recreated, in a street that’s recreated. I’d also say something else to which I really ask people to bear in mind, which is, okay, it’s a war movie, and war involves shooting and shouting and injuries and horror and civilians in a dreadful position, and actually very highly trained [Navy SEALs] in a dreadful position. But underneath all of this, what you’re actually getting is an immense intimacy. It’s the intimate moment of the very worst moment of people’s lives which we, in a sense, get privileged access to. Everybody that was interviewed was incredibly honest, not self-aggrandising, actually self-effacing and trying to dig into what it felt like to be in this moment. These are Navy SEALs. Navy SEALs are fetishised… they’re fetishised by the media, by films, by comic books and video games, and also by themselves, to an extent. But really they are, in this instance, very young men in an appalling situation. And when you ask yourself about some of their actions, and consider some of their actions in relation to the people they’re operating with, and also the civilians that are around them, you have to contextualise it in that way, sort of de-Call of Duty-ify it, de-war film-ise it. See them as a young person, as either you are or once were.”
Asked if the proximity to the real Navy SEALs helped create tiny regular human moments amid such dire circumstances, Jarvis added: “Yeah, certainly, I think it did, in a lot of ways. There were so many holders of the memories in question that we were employed to relive that, that they were all able to not only provide direct input into specific elements of what happened, but also in terms of being of a certain character that otherwise I certainly would never have met. And [they] had a certain outlook on things that I would never had any contact with. And all of Ray’s colleagues did so, whether they meant to or they didn’t mean to, but simply by being there they were, they just informed character in general, and attitude in general.”
Warfare is out now in cinemas.