Ranking the boys of WARFARE
It's Cosmo Jarvis Spring
To avoid spoilers of Warfare, skip to the ranking.
Warfare is the best new release I’ve seen this year, so far. I’m well aware it got taken down by TikTok-adjacent discourse because “it’s American propaganda about the Iraq war,” but my response to this is simple: that is not true. 1) Even if it were, that doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting or valuable. “They” “should” stop making superhero movies and Colleen Hoover adaptations because they perpetuate logics and ideologies that have evil histories and implications, but when a Marvel movie comes out people still don’t really throw that much of a fit. And, even if Warfare were abjectly evil, it would be very interesting to me that A24 paid for it, and that it turned Marvel subtext into text. Movies are not praxis or journalism, and you can see things in them that they don’t want you to. And art doesn’t need to take responsibility for dumb audiences, either. 2) Warfare is not evil or really propagandistic, at all. Yes, a guy who, once propagandized himself as a child, willingly signed up to fight in a war with no purpose except “torture Iraqis” wanted to make a movie about his experience. But, if he didn’t, no one would have paid for Warfare to be made or marketed—we live in a world with rules. With Ray Mendoza’s story, Alex Garland made a very legible, explicit movie about how simultaneously evil and ridiculous that war was. It humanizes and spectacularizes evil, emphasizing the structural complexities that come to bear on the simple, torturous experience of warfare. That is so cool. Do you want every movie about America to be The Report?
In nearly real-time, a group of guys spitting in each other’s water bottles and taking breaks from sniping families to look for their dip or say, “bro, there are bad guys coming to our location,” take over a home inhabited by two innocent, Iraqi families. The film begins with a photo of a child in front of the home before it was destroyed by the nonsense, titular warfare, and ends with a long, wide shot of the Americans leaving the home in tanks after blowing it up and shooting at it, smoke billowing from its neighborhood now littered with body parts. With them, the Americans have two Iraqi translators that they force out into an IED-infested street as bait, becoming the only two in the group blown totally to pieces. After screaming at these people for no reason other than racist egotism, Joseph Quinn’s character’s legs are all but blown off and all he can do for the rest of the movie is pathetically scream in pain. Of course, the movie makes you feel sorry for these goons: they are pathetic, taunted into being maimed or murdered for no reason other than to line some guys’ pockets. But the narrative is about how warfare is pointless: 90 minutes of racism, torture, violence, misery, devastation… and for what?
A lot of wind is taken from the movie’s sails by a tacked-on, behind-the-scenes tribute to the “real soldiers,” but I have a brain and eyes that saw and processed a movie that happened beforehand, so I understand that the post-film scenes were more a result of industrial context than artistic intent. Also, to quote Alex Garland's greatest frontline defender: “...despite my anti capitalist, anti imperialist politics I think guns and body armor and comms systems and planes and boats and armored vehicles are endlessly cool and interesting. I’m sorry, I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is, and there’s nothing I can do about the cognitive dissonance there. I simply sit with tha contradictions.” If you have ever liked an action movie, you are no better.
I don’t have the energy to take this discourse seriously, anymore, because it’s not my problem when people can’t read. And, while it is part of the jingoistic bent of the film’s existence and marketing to be framed as “having guys,” it just simply stars a ton of guys who are some combination of hot, funny, or good at acting. It seems to me, too—based on the deliveries of such lines as, “there are bad guys coming to our location”—that these guys knew exactly what movie they were in. Moreover, though, it doesn’t matter. It has a lot of guys, and I love guys.
The rubric
I have ranked the main guys in the movie Warfare based on the following qualities:
Coolness
What they look like & wear in real life, and/or in the film. I liked that they all shaved their heads, and some of them I find visually appealing (Melton). But, for the most part, to me these guys are like buddies or children to me so coolness is a better factor than hotness.
How British they are
How British are they, and, is it the cool kind of British or the annoying kind?
Their career potential
I have measured their fame level against the amount of fame I am told they have by the news and the media, using the result to predict how much posterity they will have in this industry.
The guys
There are 31 top-billed cast members of Warfare on IMDb, of whom I recall actually seeing in Warfare there are 9. I am thereby ranking 10 cast members of Warfare, which you’ll understand in a moment.1
The ranking
10. Finn Bennett
This guy, I think—hard to keep track—does something narratively important in Warfare, and so I remember him more than “Adain Bradley” or “Jake Lampert.” With a face and a name like “Finn Bennett,” despite having no bio on IMDb, he can’t hide that he’s British. This is a charming form of being British, unlike the form that Will Poulter has.
9. Will Poulter
I can never remember if Will Poulter is British, so when I heard him speak poshly in Warfare press it was scary. I do not dislike this person, nor do I think he is a weak part of the Warfare ensemble (there are none). While he is good and seems nice, he is just simply too British to ascend beyond 9th place, and Death of a Unicorn is something I don’t conceptually approve of.
8. Kit Connor
I do not know who this is outside of Warfare, but he seems to be doing well for himself, i.e. I have seen his name on X, the everything app, which is a good sign. I didn’t think he was remarkable in terms of coolness, but his performance was good in Warfare. Mostly he is a great part of the press tour due to being the cheeky kind of British. I like that he was born in 2004 but is super buff—like, calm down.
7. Noah Centineo
I watched press for Warfare before it came out, saw Warfare and enjoyed it, and it’s not until I started reading Letterboxd reviews after seeing Warfare that I discovered Noah Centineo was in Warfare. I am familiar with Noah Centineo’s work on Netflix.com, and I did not spot him in the film. If I did, I didn’t recognize him, which you’d think would bode badly for his potential or coolness. But, because I have liked him before, and because I make the rules, his ability to completely evade my consciousness vis-a-vis Warfare actually charms me. He might no longer be He-Man, but he is hanging out with Zoe Kravitz!
6. Taylor John Smith
This guy was definitely in Sharp Objects!
5. Michael Gandolfini
When I was alerted to the fact that there is an adult Gandolfini child in our midst, I rolled my eyes: I don’t care for Cooper Hoffman. But this guy is funny. When he asks Charles Melton in this interview, “Charles, you were once referred to as the Prince of Cannes. Have you lived up to that?” I laughed hard and aloud. These people have a real, genuine rapport, of which Gandolfini seems to be the shepherd. I love him.
4. D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai
3. Cosmo Jarvis
Cosmo Jarvis—that’s a name we’re not hearing everyday. I vaguely remember this guy for being hot in Lady Macbeth, but that’s not something I watched very closely. I’m reading he makes a living acting in things like Vera and Shōgun: respect. But what’s really remarkable about him is that he is New Tom Hardy, has a devious face and vibe, and is about to be in Chris Nolan’s Odyssey. This could really be a serious situation, and I’m watching it closely.
2. Joseph Quinn
This guy spawned from thin air and I love him. He’s in everything, and he can’t stop laughing. I like that he could be 20 or 40 and that he’s 31—that’s right in the middle! He is about to be much more famous than his fellow Beatles, I hate to say, and I like that he is clearly super short but Google says he’s 5’10 3/4 (I’m sure). As much as I’ve learned to love Mescal, Quinn might just have a little more juice in terms of slippery short guys.
1. Charles Melton
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Most of the time my grasp on the English language is not very firm.
I would bump up Poulter but otherwise this gets the rare Clare-Fran 98% agree. I like that Michael Gandolfini is not really trying to ape the types of characters his dad played - being in the Sopranos prequel movie does not count; no one saw that and it doesn't exist - and he seems really funny. Him poking himself with the morphine kinda the moment of the movie to me outside of when Poulter says the IED "rang his bell."
I have watched so much press from this film now and the way Cosmo Jarvis has no tolerance for any of it >>>>>>
Melton does really need a big starring role asap but I'm glad he seemingly spends 80% of his time hanging out with his mom. Of all the millennials they put in the Criterion Closet he seemed like the most ball knower.
kit connor went to the boys school attached to my school and my friend was in a production of hairspray with him and there’s this one video she showed me where he is shrieking like a banshee and it was really weird in an ew way not a haha way while standing on a table when they were messing about in rehearsals and for that reason he is the least coolest ever