- Starring
- Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny
- Director
- Alex Garland
- Rating
- R
- Genre
- Action
- Release date
- April 12, 2024
Overall Score
Rating Overview
Rating Summary
Novels and movies exploring the premise of a second American Civil War usually delve into the complexities of modern warfare, political intrigue, and the human cost of division. Themes of loyalty, betrayal, and the search for identity amidst chaos often drive the narratives, offering a stark reflection on the fragility of unity and the consequences of unchecked polarization.
Civil War
Wartime photojournalist Lee and her partner Joel pick up some stray journalists on their way to confront the corrupt President of The United States who has waged war on his own people in what is now a second American Civil War.
Review
Despite what its marketing campaign might have you think, Civil War is not a war movie. Yes, a war is in progress throughout the film, but it primarily occurs in the background. That it is an American civil war is incidental; it could have easily been any other fictional conflict anywhere in the world.
In addition to not being a war film, Civil War is not a lot of other things as well. It’s not a narratively driven film. It’s not filled with interesting revelations about the human condition. It’s not peopled with compelling characters whose unique perspectives on life give audiences something to think about long after the credits have rolled. It’s not much of anything.
What Civil War is is a $50 million love letter to war correspondents in general and photojournalists in particular. Primarily Lee’s story, we watch as she goes from an emotionally bedraggled veteran reporter who is slowly being destroyed by the futility of her life’s ambition to stop war with pictures to an emotional basketcase who enables the younger generation to do the same by repeatedly placing themselves in mortal danger with nothing but high minded ideals and Kodak between them and certain death.
Far from imparting wisdom or even provoking a single thought, Civil War’s laudable goal of remaining completely apolitical had the unfortunate side effect of giving the audience no one whom to route for or against. The main cast is generally likable, with Wagner Moura’s charismatic adrenaline junkie Joel holding most of the film together while everyone else is just sort of there and along for the ambling ride, but their mission to interview the President has no hope of changing anything, so why should anyone care?
The movie clearly intends for audiences to be moved by the parallels drawn between the young, bright-eyed enthusiasm of Cailee Spaeny’s aspiring photojournalist and Dunst’s withering one. Unfortunately, there’s not enough emotional connective tissue developed to care, largely because what they do isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things (a fact Dunst’s character establishes early on) and partly because not much of anything happens in the film.
Civil War is a middling road trip set in an inconvenient time for traveling and interspersed with a mix of meaningless dialogue and the occasional war crime. However, it’s not entirely unenjoyable. The actors are all very present and natural, Wagner Moura is excellent, and even though most of the action is incidental and does nothing to drive the story, it’s done fairly well. It’s not worth the price of a ticket or even streaming for free, but if you ever find yourself relaxing on a lazy Saturday and you’re held prisoner by a misplaced remote, you’ll survive it.
WOKE ELEMENTS
What’s In There? Only What You Take In.
- The movie does well at leaving the interpretation of events up to the viewer.
- Those who (rightly) see Biden as an incompetent would-be tyrant and fascist can easily see the few moments that Nick Offerman is on screen as a condemnation of the Dementia Patient and Chief.
- Those whose brains have been washed clean by CNN and MSNBC will no doubt see uber-leftist Offerman’s president as a thinly veiled stand-in for their most despised of orange men.
Whitey’s Got The Guns
- If there’s one thing that months and months of BLM riots, billions of dollars worth of destruction, and hundreds of injured police taught us, it’s that only white guys have access to guns and use violence to torment others.
- In two of the self-described “action” film’s three action set-pieces that do anything to drive what little narrative the film has, white country hillbillies with AR-15s are evil gun-toting yokels and or murderous racists. These are among the film’s only white guys.
Stoicism: Strong Enough For A Man, But PH Balanced For Women
- The primary man in the group is not the group leader but the emotionally accessible adrenaline junkie who gets his kicks putting himself in mortal danger for a story.
- Kirsten Dunst’s Lee leads the group and is a stoic and jaded leader who has been worn down by man’s inhumanity to man.
James Carrick
James Carrick is a passionate film enthusiast with a degree in theater and philosophy. James approaches dramatic criticism from a philosophic foundation grounded in aesthetics and ethics, offering insight and analysis that reveals layers of cinematic narrative with a touch of irreverence and a dash of snark.
17 comments
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 15, 2024 at 6:02 pm
I respect that they didn’t go out of their way to make a ham-fisted left wing propaganda piece. That said, you need some degree of realism. An alliance between California and Texas? What does California have that Texas would need?
Basil
April 15, 2024 at 6:07 pm
What KIND of American are you? American Psycho? Drive (2011)? Blade Runner: 2049? … You don’t know?
Clem
April 15, 2024 at 8:10 pm
How is a woke-ish movie 89% based? Sumpin bout that woke-o-meter ain’t right
James Carrick
April 15, 2024 at 8:13 pm
89% Based is woke-ish.
There’s the breakdown.
https://worthitorwoke.com/about-us/
Jay
May 1, 2024 at 11:36 pm
Remind me again which President surrounded himself with barbed wire and armed Army troops to protect him from his own citizens, arrested peasceful protestors to an obviously rigged election, weaponized the DOJ and FBI to arrest and harrass his political opponents ?
Richard
April 15, 2024 at 9:08 pm
Joe Biden is a fascist? Remind me again which president tried to stay in power by overturning a free and fair election?
Jefferson Reagan
April 16, 2024 at 9:19 am
Oh. You mean Al Gore?
DS
April 16, 2024 at 5:53 pm
Wow, I saw Cival War way different. I saw it as a fascist dictator Trump having disrupted the US and finally the people took him out. That’s exactly the kind of disruption I see if t gets in the white house. He respects no one and abuses anyone he can as he totally lies to trick and deceive his folliwers.
James Carrick
April 16, 2024 at 6:13 pm
Bunny With A Keyboard
April 16, 2024 at 6:19 pm
Let’s be fair, James. You hid that in a place a troll would never find it: in an article that requires higher than an elementary school reading level. 🐰
Andrew
April 17, 2024 at 1:51 am
When people say “Trump will start wars”, “it was a fair election” or calls Republicans facists, I laugh so hard I nearly puke. I just don’t know how people can be so blind to the evidence of reality by mere parrots all repeating obvious lies. I’m by no means a forever Trump supporter or a republican (they’re dishonest as well), but I can look at ALL the evidence and plainly see what is BS or at least very suspicious.
On the movie’s political stance, I took away that it was left-leaning, but not over obviously so. I decided that based on their “terrorist bomber” being someone you’d definitely see at a Trump rally. If it was a liberal, they’d be burning the flag, or waving flags of different countries who they support taking over America via illegal immigration. The white guys were all depicted as “bad” men. The (white) army guys were mercilessly killing “immigrants”, as liberals believe Trump and conservatives would do.
So yeah, it wasn’t “Barbie” leftist by any means, but it definitely felt like it was leaning that way.
Mingo
April 18, 2024 at 1:56 pm
Wagner Moura is woke enough to let this movie slip into oblivion.
James Carrick
April 18, 2024 at 2:09 pm
I don’t know anything about him but if I were to rate films based on how woke the actors in them are, I’d never be able to go above 0% BASED.
Pablo
April 26, 2024 at 3:41 pm
He is indeed pretty woke, but a very good actor. You should watch ‘Tropa de Elite’ (2007), he’s awesome in it and the film is 100% based (despite the director intentions to make it an anti police film).
jared
April 23, 2024 at 3:20 pm
if you spend 5 minutes listening to garland discuss the film you would know with certainty it’s about trump.
MattS
April 28, 2024 at 10:56 pm
I have loved every Garland film I’ve seen. He’s usually very articulate, thoughtful and a little offbeat… The twisted ideas he plays with always get my attention. (I haven’t yet seem Men- mostly because it just feels like it’ll be 90 minutes of man-hating…) 🙁
It hurts to see him do a few of these (especially in a row) where it might seem that political agenda takes prime focus. The irony here is that if it is indeed about the ‘fascist Trump’, that Biden is actually far more fascist in reality!
JD
May 27, 2024 at 6:32 pm
I hope that nothing in this nightmare of a movie happens in real life. No guns raised against your countrymen, ever