“Warfare” actor Will Poulter, left, speaks with co-director and Navy SEAL veteran Ray Mendoza on set. (Murray Close/A24)

Before he co-directed A24’s newest film “Warfare,” set for a major box office release, Navy SEAL veteran Ray Mendoza spent years as a little-known figure working various stunt and advising jobs in Hollywood that leveraged his military experience.

“I was, you know, PAing, working camera, which was a humbling experience coming as a chief, a SEAL chief,” Mendoza told Stars and Stripes in March, adding that he went from being a Joint Terminal Attack Controller, or JTAC, “controlling million-dollar aircraft, to carrying battery blocks to and from camera trucks.”

Mendoza co-directed “Warfare” alongside the critically acclaimed director Alex Garland. The film is a realistic reconstruction of a battle Mendoza experienced in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. It will be released in theaters Friday.

Mendoza got his start in film while he was still in the service, starring in the 2012 film “Act of Valor.” He later met fellow SEAL veteran Marcus Luttrell and director Peter Berg to train the cast of Berg’s 2014 film “Lone Survivor,” which followed SEALs in Afghanistan and was based on Luttrell’s nonfiction novel of the same name.

Mendoza built a relationship with Berg and began getting into stunt work. When he left the military in 2014, Mendoza said he “made a leap” into film.

It was at times humbling. Although he was working on “Lone Survivor,” the tech advising gigs he did were not paying the bills, and no one knew who he was.

But Mendoza continued to branch out and get bigger jobs, eventually reaching the point where he began thinking about what his next step would be.

“My path still wasn’t really defined. I was just wanting to tell stories, working with veterans, who have helped propel my career,” Mendoza said.

He later got the invitation to join Garland’s 2024 film “Civil War” as a military effects coordinator, where he was able to put his approach into practice.

“Some of the scenes in Civil War, or even in the other movies, I rely a lot on veterans. We have a lot to offer,” he said.

“Warfare” co-directors Ray Mendoza, left, and Alex Garland on set. (Murray Close/A24)

Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza and his daughter, Zoë, in an undated photo. (Team Never Quit via Facebook)

“Civil War” was a key turning point in Mendoza’s career. Mendoza and Garland found they enjoyed working together, Garland said at an early screening of “Warfare” in Washington on March 17.

When it came time to film the movie’s climax, in which rebels storm the White House, Garland said he stepped aside and had Mendoza direct the scene.

Once he began reviewing the footage, Garland was impressed and intrigued. He liked that Mendoza ignored the time compressions common in Hollywood battle scenes, with the gunfight playing out as it might in real time, and found the gunfire had an interesting rhythm.

Garland eventually asked Mendoza if he had any stories from his time in the service that could be adapted to a film that used minimal to no time compression, Garland said at the screening. The result was “Warfare,” for which Mendoza was elevated to the role of co-writer and co-director.

Though “Civil War” might have been his big break, Mendoza emphasized that his road to making “Warfare” was a long journey.

“If I were to do this movie when I first started, it would’ve been a disaster,” he said.

Now that the movie is finished, Mendoza said he feels “the weight starts to come off my shoulders” with each phase of approval he gets from veterans or their family members.

“The guys who were there saying ‘All right, you got it right,’ which they obviously helped me do. Showing it to different veteran groups ... wives, daughters, sons, cousins you name it. Friends. Saying, like ‘Thank you, I wish my dad could see this,’ or ‘I wish my brother could see this.’ ... It wasn’t my design, I was just trying to be true with it, as much as possible. And to know there’s these secondary and tertiary effects is very rewarding.”

From left to right: “Warfare” actors Charles Melton and D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, U.S. Navy SEAL veteran Elliott Miller, U.S. Army veteran Jeff Craft, Navy SEAL veteran Joe Hildebrand, and writer/co-director Ray Mendoza at the world premiere of “Warfare” in Los Angeles, Calif., Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. (A24, courtesy)

Kaylyn Barnhart contributed to this story.