Susan Granger’s review of “Civil War” (A24)
Deliberately pushing all your ‘fear’ buttons, Alex Garland’s “Civil War” is obviously intended to be a cautionary tale but it falls short in so many ways.
The dystopian story begins sometime in the near-immediate future in war-torn New York City, where water is rationed and residents are battling the police.
Several military-embedded journalists are preparing to undertake the precarious drive to Washington, D.C. hoping to interview the divisive President, who has disbanded the FBI and ordered air strikes on civilians.
What was once the United States has been divided by regional factionalism. Hostility abounds between federal government-backed Loyalist forces under an authoritarian third-term President (Nick Offerman) and secessionists known as The Western Front, comprising California and Texas.
There’s also a Florida Alliance as well as a New People’s Army holding territory in the Northwest. Each of these groups demands fidelity and no one trusts anyone else’s intentions.
Much to the annoyance of veteran Reuters photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), she – along with her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) and New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) – will be joined in their PRESS van by a young, free-lance documentarian, Jessie Cullen (Callee Spaeny), who admires and wants to emulate Lee. (The foreshadowing is abundantly obvious.)
Their tense, episodic, 800-mile road trip will take them through ‘enemy’ encampments, military checkpoints and improvised refugee camps. The most horrifying scene finds the journalists being held hostage by a ruthless, relentless soldier (Jesse Plemons) who demands to know: “What kind of American are you?”
British writer/director Alex Garland (“Ex Machina”), whose father was a political cartoonist, and cinematographer Rob Hardy opt for abrasive ambiguity, chronicling the senseless, bloody brutality yet never taking a partisan stance.
Instead of embracing any specific ideology, they’ve seemingly used their film as a speculative catalyst for conversation, presenting unbiased reporters as heroes, determined to hold polarization in check.
While it’s reassuring that a free, independent press still exists in Garland’s grim future, what’s missing are revelatory backstories for traumatized Lee and terrified Jessie that would have ignited more emotional resonance.
FYI: “Civil War” opened in theaters on April 12, 2024. The real American Civil War began exactly 163 years before that.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Civil War” is a fraught, frenzied, fragmented 5, playing in theaters.
