"Civil War" is a hypothetical, disturbing and incomplete fantasy that will hopefully never come to fruition. It is disarmingly apolitical yet I would have liked some politics thrown into the mix, some measure of discourse about where the U.S. is now and where it may be going. I came into this film after the 2024 election so maybe its warnings are not anything we should take heed of, or should we?
America is in the midst of chaos in some uncertain future date. Journalists roam the cities recording riots and suicide bombers - it is bloody mess. Kirsten Dunst is Lee Smith, a hard-bitten combat photographer who has seen it all and is unaffected by any violence she witnesses. She is accompanied by Reuters press reporter, Joel (Wagner Moura), who lives for combat and for general chaos. Stephen McKinley Henderson is an older writer for the New York Times, Sammy, who knows that the President of the U.S. is unlikely to do a sit-down interview with Joel. Finally, there is the young Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), an ambitious photographer, who worships Lee's altar and slowly overcomes her fears of piercing bullets and people dying in front of her. They are on their way to Washington, D.C. and you know this will be no easy journey.
Bloodshed follows them every step of the way, including an unflinchingly powerful scene with Jesse Plemons as a racist soldier who encounters the press group and asks them if they are American. This character is exactly what we might expect now more than ever, yet the movie shuffles between bloodbath incidents and more impending bloodbath. You just know that during a freewheeling carefree car chase between one set of reporters and another, something bloody this way comes. The movie also decisively ends on a sour note that has no real buildup. If the divisive and fascistic President, who gets a third term (!), is targeted for execution and if there is a secession movement going on, why on earth are not we given the essential political ingredients to understand how this fictional America got to this point? Without the political stance (and I do not mean political party affiliation), "Civil War" is no different than a George Romero zombie apocalypse except that there are no zombies.
"Civil War" is a strong, thoroughly watchable film of mysterious purpose - it is no more political than the grossly overdone "The Hunt" from many years back. I think director Alex Garland wanted to make a picture devoid of politics yet somehow speaking to our times within some subtext. Well, he managed the apolitical yet the subtext is lost on me. He chickened out.
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