A nationwide war zone in a full throttle movie.
Alex Garland’s latest movie “Civil War” is like watching a vision of the future. If the world keeps up with all the violence and murders, then a Second Civil War can break out. At least that’s how I’m imagining it. I, myself, like to turn Jack Nicholson’s bad guy opening line from “The Departed” into my own good guy line: “I don’t want to be a product of my environment; I want my environment to be a product of me.” Then, the world would be a better place. I’m not being selfish; I’m thinking of other people.
I saw this movie in IMAX, and I was at the edge of my seat from beginning to end. It’s life-threatening when partisan extremist militias and protestors turn our country into a living Hell. One that resorts to torture, murder, and burnings. Unless there are signals, and if war journalists wear press badges, it’s often difficult to tell who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. Believe me journalists, you have to have your badges in these war zones.
We meet a group of journalists-the war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), their mentor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and the young aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeney)-who all must travel from New York City to Washington D.C. to interview the disgraced President (Nick Offerman). Of course, it isn’t a journey without challenges, some more life-threatening than others.
Jessie idolizes Lee, who starts to lose her faith in the power of journalism, while the young journalist learns all about the horrors of war. Every soldier or rebel, every bloodshed. She must take their pictures. They all have to get pictures.
There’s a sequence that uses De La Soul’s “Say No Go,” and it’s riveting the way it’s photographed by Rob Hardy and directed by Garland. There are also horrific scenes of how people get murdered, like a man in a tire being set on fire. All these war crimes represent the movie’s haunting nature. Could our country be this repulsive? Unless people cut back on the violence, which might be impossible at this rate.
“Civil War” is also emotionally complex as the journalists and photographers deal with the horrors of war, while continuing their trek. Dunst, in her first role since “The Power of the Dog,” has the attitude and consistency to convince us of her nature. She’s not without her vulnerabilities, and the actress is continuing to prove to us that she’s great in any generation. Spaeny uses the right range of emotions within her youth, and she has chemistry with Dunst. You also get some wise support from Henderson, whose character tries to be Lee’s voice of reasoning, and timing from Moura, who has the dialogue and tone to survive the screenplay. And Jesse Plemons plays a soldier in one of the film’s most thrilling moments. The kind that keeps you at the edge of your seat.
Ever since he’s directed “Ex Machina,” Garland is able to make one entertaining movie after another. He’s made his writing debut with “28 Days Later,” which represented London during a zombie outbreak. And he represents “Civil War” in a timely manner, the kind that you don’t wish will happen in America any time. I’m not as political or newsworthy as others, but I do try to acknowledge what is going on in the world.
This is one of the year’s best movies, and April has just gotten started. Being an action movie, it has guns and fighting, representing how this Second Civil War can engulf America, and it doesn’t want to be mindless. It wants to entertain us with how America has lost its mind, and it’s some kind of a masterpiece.