The former US Navy Seal on working alongside the Ex Machina director to produce a war movie that’s as true to life as possible
Ray Mendoza, 45, served for more than 16 years as a US Navy Seal and training instructor before leaving to work as a Hollywood military adviser, specialising in choreographing gunfight sequences for movies including Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024). It’s with Garland that he’s now co-written and co-directed the film Warfare, a claustrophobically immersive account of an ill-fated surveillance mission that he survived in Ramadi province, Iraq, in 2006. Two men, among them Mendoza’s best friend, sniper and medic Elliott Miller, were badly injured by al-Qaida insurgents, and the attack intensified as the Seals sought to evacuate their wounded. The film, described in the New Yorker as “a work of hyper-exacting realism”, opens in the UK on 18 April.
How do you feel about war films in general?
I feel not seen. It’s actually embarrassing to watch them – they don’t get our culture right, we don’t speak that way. People have asked, are you worried that Warfare may trigger veterans and active-duty military? I think it does the opposite. It’s saying, you’re not forgotten, you are seen. Oftentimes, what is more triggering is seeing what we go through not accurately represented.
