Civil War is a 2024 action-thriller set in a dystopian United States where the nation is embroiled in an intense war between Western Forces and Loyalists.
One nation, under God, divisible, with liberty and justice for those who agree with me. In this future United States of America, we’re here. A Civil War, entrenched within the nation for some undetermined amount of time, but long enough to upend any previous remnants of life. In his third term, The President (Nick Offerman) leads the Federalists against the opposition known as the Western Forces. The President has refused to give a one-on-one interview in over a year, yet his recent statements broadcast over airwaves affirm that a Federalist victory is quickly approaching.
On the ground, the war is anything but slowing down. Seasoned photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and her colleague, Joel (Wagner Moura) are hell-bent on speaking to the Commander in Chief despite the essential death threat they’re signing up for—journalists are getting off’d when they set foot in the nation’s capital. With the risk in tow, the duo set off to Washington, D.C., joined by budding photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaney), shrewd enough to be able to get a seat in this road trip, and industry legend old-timer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), looking for a ride into Charlottesville, Virginia for his own personal reasons. Together, the four will experience horrors like no other in the effort of getting the story.
The mere name and title of “Civil War” evokes so many expectations as to how it should play out. And when the 15 to 30 second ads are running, they play into those expectations as well – got to sell tickets and explosive action can do it easier. But despite being distributor A24’s biggest budget flick to date, Civil War isn’t wholly focused on the war at all, what got us here, or even which side is which. It’s about survival in this doomsday dystopia, and the impact—positively and negatively—journalism plays in wartime scenarios. And though it can be a little frustrating to lore seekers like myself (releasing a map of how the US is divided in the movie and not even touching on it a smidge is a choice), I respect that the movie isn’t locked into one particular side and as such will be one of the most talked about movies of the year, maybe even longer.
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For writer/director Alex Garland, his latest film finds the filmmaker operating within his most grounded subject matter ever, far removed from the likes of Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men. The word immersive has been used liberally when describing Civil War, but that’s because it fits to a T. Garland and the entire sound crew deserve flowers; everything from the gunshots to the overhead choppers to the battleground dialogue is anxiety-inducing in the way the constant threat of death would be.
Editor Jake Roberts accentuates this with occasional hard cuts from quiet moments into full-on firefights. While a theme of the film is desensitization, witnessing the violence on-screen always lands with an impact. The only weak-ish part of the presentation are a couple of the song choices being obtrusive; otherwise, this is quite the technical achievement deserving of some end-of-year award representation.
There are nuggets sporadically placed in Garland’s script that provide sketches of how this version of America collapsed internally, but the how and the why are de-emphasized for the who and the what. Garland’s Civil War is intimately invested in the foursome of journalists all undergoing their own sense of self-discovery/self-acceptance (albeit to different levels, not every character feels equally realized) and what type of personality it takes to capture such atrocities. To what end are the endeavors of these photojournalists for the greater societal good versus the self-gratification of satisfying an adrenaline rush? Is true objective journalism worthless in such a divided nation? On top of those questions, in a weird way, there are a lot of thematic similarities with movies like Nope and Nightcrawler, analyzing sensationalism and whether our collective thirst for spectacle is force-fed to us or something that already exists with no prodding from the media.
A picture can often be worth a thousand words, and so too can a simple expression. OK, simple expressions don’t adequately describe Dunst’s character Lee Smith here, but what I’m going for is that the actresses’ detached countenance and machine-like stoicism tells us as an audience everything we need to know about how she’s survived and thrived in this high-stressed world. As she undergoes a career self-retrospective in the span of the feature, you can feel her grappling with her existence and wrestling with her human instincts. Her transformation runs in parallel to Spaney’s Jessie, who plays fresh-eyed and frightened very well as she’s thrown into the deep end to either sink or swim. It’s an intriguing look at the teacher/pupil dynamic with key moments serving as acceleration points for each person’s respective journey.
War. War never changes. No, this isn’t Fallout (can go to Amazon Prime for that), but Civil War itself essentially follows that quote. It doesn’t matter how we got here, but we’re here and all inhabitants of a nation are impacted by a cycle of violence whether firsthand or secondhand. And there’s always the chance that if we don’t heed the historical future fiction warning, we may be destined and doomed to repeat it.