The term “poetics of affect” originates in the Aristotelian theory of tragedy, understood as a founding document of poetical thinking. It describes the manner in which a given work of art – in this case, cinematic images – structures the affective involvement of its audience. After elaborating on the relation between affect theory and theories of aesthetic experience, we turn to the example of the Hollywood war film genre to demonstrate how a specific poetics of affect mediates the tension between the production of aesthetic pleasure and the claim to political efficacy.