WAR MOVIES: “Warfare.” / “The Last Front.” / “Sobibor.” / “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”

“Warfare” (2025, HBO Max) war film based on writer/co-director Ray Mendoza's experiences during the Iraq War as a U.S. Navy SEAL. The film depicts an encounter on 19 November 2006 after the Battle of Ramadi. 

       The script is drawn from the testimonies of the platoon members and is presented in real time. Directed by an author who knows details of wreckage, squalor and twisted entrails, Alex Garland delivers sheer war horror and intimate agony. (Check out Mr Garland's “Civil War,” as well.)

       The sudden impact of this movie is a crushed bone sticking out of a soldier's leg. The gnawing terror of combat that is blown all over your face and this just one, singular scene, and that's all. The distant ruthlessness of war, the cold defiance. 🎥💻📽

“The Last Front” (2024, Amazon Prime) Belgian epic period action drama. Set during World War I, it follows a widower farmer who becomes a war hero, Leonard, and his family as they are thrown into the midst of a war they do not understand. It is set during the first days of the conflict as the German war machine advances and during what came to be known as the Rape of Belgium.

       This is a decent enough war movie by writer/director Julien Hayet-Kerknawi. Dramatic tension is gripping enough to keep viewers stuck on the couch. And a fine performance by the “good guy” Iain Glen as Leonard and “bad guy” Joe Anderson as Lieutenant Laurentz. 🎥💻📽

“Sobibor” (2018, Amazon Prime) Russian war drama, based on the Sobibor revolt which occurred in 1943 in German-occupied Poland. 

       The main character of the movie is the Jewish-Soviet soldier Alexander Pechersky, who was a lieutenant in the Red Army. In October 1943, he was deported to the Sobibor death camp, where Jews were being exterminated in gas chambers. In just three weeks, Pechersky planned an uprising with prisoners from Poland and other locations around Western Europe. This uprising was partly successful, allowing roughly 300 prisoners to escape, of whom roughly 60 survived the war.

       A few inaccuracies: Mr Pechersky was captured by the Germans in October 1941, not in 1943. Sobibor was the site of one of two (not the only) successful uprisings by Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners during Operation Reinhard. The revolt at Treblinka extermination camp on 2 August 1943 resulted in up to 100 escapes. Etc etcetera.

       Some tweaks in the script based on historical events are an “accepted” fact in cinema. Those can be “accidental,” done on purpose, or rewritten as warranted by the production (budgetary constraints, composite characters, release-rejection from real individuals). 

       So we simply watch and enjoy a movie as a movie. And, I reckon, “Sobibor” delivered the message clearly as the overall intention. Konstantin Khabenskiy as Sasha Pechersky aptly channeled the desperate urgency and restrained fear of those hellish days. Christopher Lambert as Karl Frenzel is cadaverous with a glare that could slay a cobra. His half-whisper, half-growl--whatever words come out--are terrifying as a sniper's bullet in the dark.

       What's more admirable is Konstantin Khabenskiy also co-wrote and directed this war movie. 🎥👍📽

“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” (2016, Apple TV+) biographical action-thriller, follows six members of the Annex Security Team who fought to defend the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya after waves of attacks by militants on September 11, 2012. 

       First of all, this is a Michael Bay project so don't expect depth and insight, irrelevant of the high-powered subject matter. Read up more per the political blowback but chill. Just settle down and watch a kickass action movie. The source book by Mitchell Zuckoff dealt with the six members of the Annex Security Team, CIA security contractors. That was it.

       Yup. That's what “13 Hours…” is. Military engagement, soldier language, lots of explosions. There's a few interjecting humor along the way, such as ordinary Libyans’ weird reaction to the warfare and the confusion who are “friendlies” and who are the enemies. 

       James Badge Dale, John Krasinski, Pablo Dominic Fumusa, Schreiber et al delivered the goods as we expected them to be. But more engaging and realistic, and human, than six John Rambos.