Civil War Review: A Thematically Hollow Political Thriller
comingsoon.netAlex Garland’s new movie is a fascinating little thing. comes to us from the director of Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men. He has had a strong career, and this movie marks one of A24’s first big-budget films. $50 million went to the production of their most expensive film to date, and it had a positive reception at its SXSW premiere. This dystopian thriller follows a group of photojournalists making their way through a wartorn American landscape to interview the President of the United States.
My experience watching Civil War was something to behold. I adored it for the first 70% of the movie. And then, as the film drove headfirst towards its dreary conclusion, it lost me more and more by the second. Then, as the credits rolled, I felt nothing. No connection to the material. No pondering about the state of America. I was unperturbed. It’s unfortunate because for so much of the movie, I thought it was very good, but the final act brought everything crashing down to the point where I lost interest in everything the movie was building up.
The opening brings a lot of real-world archival footage into the film, recontextualizing it to show the start of a new American Civil War in a not-so-distant future. He builds a world that feels both familiar and unfamiliar, combining the texture of New York City with some more desolate, ravaged landscapes later in the film. We see brawls between protesters and law enforcement and many things that exist in our reality. The main characters we follow do not align themselves with the Loyalists, Western Forces, Florida Alliance, or New People’s Army, which are the four factions the USA has been divided into in this film.
Rather, we follow a group of photojournalists. The protagonist is Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a hardened journalist who has become well-known in the industry. Through a few flashbacks, we get a sense of her world. She has seen truly horrific images, and since this movie is from her perspective, we have to see what she
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