Alex Garland is a talented director. I think. A novelist who transitioned to movies with scripts like 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd, he made a big splash with his directorial debut Ex Machina, which was good, overrated but also easily the peak of his efforts—leading as it did into Annihilation, a muddled distaff remake of Stalker, and then descended into the risible Men and Civil War—well, let’s just say there’s no confusion as to his politics.

It gives one pause, whether to watch a movie about a squad in Ramadi during the Iraq War, under these circumstances. However, he had a co-director and co-writer on this, first time writer/director Ray Mendoza, a Navy Seal who was part of the squad that took part in the events detailed in this film. Once again, The Boy and I decided to roll the dice.

Rolling the dice can pay off, people.

In a way, Warfare is like a Steven Soderbergh joint: Its very factual, very unadorned, and it could be considered low-key, except for the whole “holy crap, this is stressful as hell.” In fact, I started to think of it as PTSD: The Movie. Or maybe MTSD—Mid-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Our American squad is sent to do some surveillance on some Iraqi terrorists—I was actually sort of vague on what “success” would mean here—when the locals catch on to them and lay siege. One or two members of the squad are lightly injured, and when the others try to get them evacuated, they all end up in way too close proximity to an IED.

They’re immediately shell-shocked, of course, and their injuries are now much, much worse. Also, command doesn’t want to send in another evacuation vehicle because, hey, the first one got hit by an IED.

It’s ninety minutes of pure stress. There’s very little character development, no back stories, not much in the way of dialogue, and the whole movie basically takes place in a box made of concrete, with a poor, terrorized Iraqi family stuffed into one bedroom.

It’s excellent.

There’s no politics to speak of. I mean, “War is bad,” I guess. But that’s not really a political statement when you’ve just stepped on an IED.

Obviously, it’s not for everyone. I’m not joking about the stress level. The Boy and I were the only ones in the theater for this, and I can’t see it being a crowd-pleaser. It looks to make about $20M on a budget of $20M, and even that strikes me as remarkably high given the content.

It’s a man’s man’s film. From a cinematic standpoint, you could say that the characters should’ve been developed more, or the action should have felt like it had more of a point, but this kind of unglamorously violent, goal-oriented action came across as very pure: If you’re in combat, history doesn’t matter much—none of this “gal back home” or “sick mother in the hospital” sentimentality that are clichés of war movies.

You and your squad are in trouble, and you’re going to get out of it, and that’s all that matters just now.

The Boy and I liked it. Ray Mendoza might never do anything else cinematically, and he’ll have done good. And I hope this kind of “show the world” approach (versus the “describe a world that suits a particular political viewpoint” approach) takes hold with Garland, because he could really turn out some masterpieces.