2024 | rated R| starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Jesse Plemmons | written and directed by Alex Garland | 1h 49m | 4 out of 5 stars |
Having delivered some of the absolute best science fiction of the last few years as both a writer and director, Alex Garland turns his attention to speculative fiction handling some of the most volatile material on the planet with the eye and craftsmanship of a filmmaker. If Civil War is Garland’s final film as a director (as he’s hinted), he’s gone out with a bang.
In the near future, the United States of America has been ripped into factions waging war on each other, including seperatist alliance of the Western Front, a southern Florida Alliance and those literally in the middle, Loyal to the former United States government and it’s 3rd term authoritarian president (Nick Offerman, in a cameo). The movie is unclear on which happened first: the president’s usurping or the national divide. It’s unclear on a lot of things by design, scoping down to the story of 2 war journalists, Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) who make an unsteady business alliance to travel together to Washington DC before the separatists get there first. Along the way they pick up young budding war photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and Lee’s mentor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) who navigate one home-grown terror after another on the trip.
With Civil War, Garland has elected to make a movie instead of the all-to-easy commentary on contemporary divided US politics (and anyone that says it does is, frankly, an idiot). What he puts together here is actually more far-sighted and damning: what if all the wars the US has incited or been involved with overseas, came inside its own borders. That cautionary tale comes through Lee and Joel as hardened overseas war photographers who have seemingly lost all humanity in the pursuit of getting the right photo of human carnage. While our protagonists our journalists, Garland depicts them less as record-keepers of truth, but more like adrenaline junkie soldiers in Full Metal Jacket addicted to the next big high of war.
The film plays out like any road trip movie, in vignettes, each one harrowing and tense. Garland shoots it all with the bullets whizzing past our heads and the bombs blowing out the speakers. It’s graphic and jarring, testing young Jessie at every turn if she has the mental and intestinal fortitude to see these signs and remain as emotionally detached as the job requires. Along the way we get shoot-outs, tense sniper attacks, bombings and even more tense confrontations with psychopaths who have survived and thrived in the war. Jesse Plemmons makes a harrowing cameo appearance as an armed-up gorilla fighter that gives the group an American loyalty test in front of a mass grave.
It hasn’t been since Independence Day when the destruction of real life national monuments have been used this effectively. Civil War is a visceral thrill ride, a premise fully realized all the way up to its unnerving D.C. set finale. This may not be the movie people expected it to be, but Garland should be pleased with it. It’s one of the first great movies of 2024.