"Civil War" review — A ferocious imagining of a United States plunged into war
“What kind of American are you?”
Every time she’s survived a war zone with her photographs in hand, journalist Lee Smith thought she was sending a warning home. Lee’s been through a lot, as we get to know through some early traumatic flashback sequences. She’s experienced conflict the world over, seen people die in front of her, and experienced the most horrific parts of humanity armed with only her camera. But now, that conflict has come home. While the causes behind the war are unknown to the viewer, the United States of America has dissolved into a four-faction civil war. There’s fighting in major cities, the highways are empty, mass starvation ravages the country, the economy is in freefall, and the President is barely holding his grip on power in Washington. All of those warnings Lee spent her career sending seem to be rather useless right now.
Civil War is the latest film from English screenwriter and director Alex Garland, the filmmaker behind Ex Machina (2015), Annihilation (2018), and TV’s Devs. The film takes its viewer into a not-too-distant future United States, one where a controversial third-term POTUS (played by Nick Offerman) has turned the country into a warzone. The “Loyalist States” are fighting a losing battle against the “Western Forces” of California and Texas to the west and the “Florida Alliance” to the south. The president has retreated into the confines of the White House, chaos reigns, and the entire nation is tearing itself apart. A major step up from Garland’s disappointing Men (2022), Civil War is a haunting and exhilarating journey into war, that puts the audience uncomfortably close to conflict. With some incredibly strong performances leading the fray, the film is a memorable, if not a little undercooked, experience.
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| Cailee Spaeny in Civil War. Photo via A24. |
Foreseeing a possible end of the war, journalists Lee Smith (played by Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (played by Wagner Moura), along with veteran journalist Sammy (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson) and aspiring photographer Jessie (played by Cailee Spaeny), saddle up their white press van and begin the trip from New York City to Washington D.C. with one goal: interview and photograph the President before the Western Forces get him. Contrary to what the marketing may have suggested, the film doesn’t play out like a high-octane survival thriller set in the constant excitement of the frontlines. Instead, the film is an incredibly bleak and often upsetting portrait of the chaos and hostility of war. The film is a “road trip” narrative, for lack of a better term, into the heart of darkness of this American wasteland. It’s not an easy journey southwards, made all the more difficult with the assortment of civilians and soldiers they encounter on the trip down.
Outside of New York, they find a pair of predatory gas station attendants with a few surprises in their shed. In a decimated rural community, they witness a warzone first-hand and follow a group of militia soldiers in a tense firefight with a Loyalist State unit. They find a small town that seems entirely untouched by the conflict, with its residents doing everything they can to just “stay out” of the whole thing. They find two snipers stuck in an eternal waiting game with each other next to an old Christmas decoration display no one’s bothered to put away. There’s a particularly tense encounter with a xenophobic soldier somewhere outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, a role played to unnerving (and uncredited) perfection by Jesse Plemons. It all eventually comes to a head with the arrival in Washington and a gruelling battle between the President’s remaining soldiers and the WF.
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| Wagner Moura in Civil War. Photo via A24. |
The film’s emphasis is not on the action and violence, although there’s plenty of it to go around, but on the internal journeys our central characters embark on. Lee, a witness to endless wars, is trying to teach Jessie the ways of the photojournalist, including the severe emotional detachment that Lee has developed over the years to endless assortments of violence and horror. Through Lee and Jessie’s relationship, the film explores the weight of witnessing. Lee has been a witness to brutality for so much of her professional life in a role that is, at once, completely and utterly indispensable while also being horrendously cruel. Lee takes things at a difference, keeping her camera lens between her and processing what she’s endured. Joel, who’s suffered through similar tragedies thanks to his job, plays off his trauma with a charismatic, carefree attitude. The performances from the entire cast are stellar. Kirsten Dunst brings complexity to an emotionally isolated Lee, Wagner Moura is charming and delightful as the troubled Joel, Stephen McKinley Henderson adds gravitas and wisdom to Sammy, and Cailee Spaeny (hot off the heels of her performance in last year’s Priscilla) shines as the young and impressionable Jessie. There are just as many stellar performances from the massive supporting ensemble, not least of which is Nick Offerman’s turn as the increasingly desperate President.
In its craft, Civil War is utterly excellent. Garland’s screenplay is incredibly well written, full of tense exchanges and clever character writing, even if its themes feel underdeveloped (more on that later). Cinematographer Rob Hardy’s post-apocalyptic imaginings are a sight to behold, bringing intimacy and a sense of scale to the violence. The editing is particularly excellent, with its razor-sharp cutting and clever use of juxtaposition to give the violence as much punch as possible. The film sounds amazing, too. Its gunfire and explosion sound effects are mixed louder than one might expect from an action film, making the bursts of violence, and the incredibly bloody battle in Washington in the third act, jarring experiences. For audiences that have been conditioned to accept mass violence through their popular media for decades, Civil War makes it scary and brings an element of real-world weight to every trigger pulled.
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| Kirsten Dunst in Civil War. Photo via A24. |
The influences from and comparisons to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now are unavoidable here. It has a very similar narrative structure, anti-war themes, scenes of upsetting violence, and some great uses of licensed music. While Garland’s film doesn’t quite have the bite, scale, or foreboding darkness that Coppola’s masterwork does, it takes some of the right notes from its predecessor and updates it to a 21st-century context. However, where Apocalypse Now has a very specific target in its critique, the Vietnam War and the policies of the United States government during those 20 years, Civil War doesn’t have the benefit of that focus. There’s been much discussion about the political content of Civil War in relation to the U.S.’s (and the rest of the world’s) very tense political climate. What makes the film such a ripe field for discussion is that its politics are never obvious, nor is it clear if it has any particular leaning one way or another. However, the film doesn’t read so much “apolitical” as it does “apathetic.” The politics of the film’s fictional conflict are obscured to the point of total ambiguity. We can take a guess as to why this war has broken out, but the exact motivations behind the struggle are never explained.
There is a strange emptiness at the centre of Civil War that none of the excellent character writing, cinematography, or editing can really make sense of: what does it all mean? The film is incredibly visceral and brutal, and yet the point the film wants the viewer seems totally elusive. In many ways, the film feels quite unsatisfying. It would be much easier if there was an obvious point or clear political leaning to the film, but this seems to be absent. Garland intentionally obfuscates the civil war alluded to in the title, making it ultimately unknowable to the viewer. Is this because Garland is being lazy or is it because he wants to focus on the central characters? Does he avoid direct politics to create a more universal message or is he just scared of controversy? What is the trade-off between keeping a story intimate and not allowing the audience to understand the world of the film? Ultimately, the answers to these questions, and many more, are in the mind of the viewer. I myself am not entirely of one mind about any of them. What Civil War does well is showcasing the brutality of war in a jarring and intimate way, completely deromanticizing the violence audiences take for granted in Hollywood films, pared with some excellent performances and writing. Whether or not it means anything at all is up to you.
Civil War is now playing in theatres.
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