Film Review: Civil War

3 Stars

By Joseph Beyer | April 20, 2024

In the not-so-futuristic landscape of domestic unrest, the United States of America (as seen in the dystopian thriller Civil War) has been fractured. Why, how, and what exactly the new insurrection is about you will have to piece together yourself. That’s because in the hands of writer and director Alex Garland (Ex Machina), the why is not important. What is, it seems, is taking you on an elaborate journey of metaphors so apolitical and bland that most of the tension of the concept is lost.

The film starts with a razor edge as the dark times are introduced to us using intercut broadcast footage of the unnamed war intercut with a Trumpian U.S. president practicing his militant victory speech from the White House while violence rages on outside his windows. As played by the ever-fascinating Nick Offerman, the president sadly vanishes into the background of the story quickly, not reappearing until the final moments of the film. You will miss him.

That’s because most of the other characters you will now follow are far less interesting, even as played by talented, famous faces. Led by Kirsten Dunst as the grizzled and award-winning photojournalist Lee, the cast includes actress Cailee Spaeny as Jessie, the hero-worshiping young photography protege determined to make her mark on the journalism world; Warner Moura as the field producer Joel; and Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy, the aging media stalwart from The New York Times who still has stories to chase (seen here not as the Old Gray Lady but an Old Gray Man).

As the journalists are thrust into mayhem, some deal with the surrounding violence like soldiers: drinking, drugging, and numbing their pain away. Others are determined to document the history playing out around them, even as we the audience have little context for the battle itself. They suppress their emotions and harden their resolve—the idea being that in the face of violence or unrest, all of us can become dehumanized.

It’s a conceptual story that won’t evolve much past that, as the journalists band together and head to the front lines of the war determined to get one last interview with the sitting president before his downfall. As they travel, “the press” is given special access, protected by the military, and treated as a special class.

In some of the even more implausible sequences, the journalists are able to dodge all dangers without protection during intense and laborious gun battles, insert or extract themselves from war zones using only their press passes, and somehow weave in and out of this war easily until they are standing in the Oval Office at the final moments of the fall of democracy.

By the time most scenes are in motion, you will predict how they end, because there really isn’t much nuance to making your most evil characters wear silly red tinted glasses.

When I walked into the theater to see Civil War, I had intentionally not watched the trailer nor read any prep on the story. I felt immediately on edge as the film began, and then utterly bored as it limped to an allegorical finish.

As a narrative metaphor for killing the free press, the collapse of society, and the abandonment of norms—or what an intentional insurrection might really be like—Civil War is remarkably one-dimensional and sometimes bizarre. From photojournalists with analog cameras who can get perfect shots in battle, to happy refugee camps with a Kumbaya energy, to the unlikely partnership of Texas and California (!), Civil War just can’t seem to click.

Tragically not the fault of the filmmakers, the tension and fear and disconnections most of us feel within society are terrifying enough without embellishment.