Following months of subtle, intriguing promotion, Alex Garland’s epic, action-packed war flick Civil War is finally in theaters for everyone to see what the big deal is all about.
When the trailer dropped, there were many questions. Why is an English filmmaker making a political action-thriller set in the United States? Why does he portray California and Texas as allies? Wasn’t there a Captain America sequel already called Civil War?
Well, after all the questions and theories, the big, important message Garland presents with his new film is…freedom of the press.
A movie like Civil War could probably only be made by someone aware of American politics from the sidelines. Here in this dystopian, mid-war universe, not only is the country split between the west and the east, but we have the military versus the government, and an authoritarian leader of the free world played by Nick Offerman.
Our central characters are veteran photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), rookie photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), print journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) and rival journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) as they race to attempt an on-the-spot interview with the President, who hasn’t spoken to the press in over a year. Sonoya Mizuno, Jefferson White, Nelson Lee and Evan Lai co-star as fellow reporters and Dunst’s real-life husband Jesse Plemons appears with a stress-inducing cameo.
Though it feels impossible to shoot a war movie and not make any political statements, Garland tries to be as vague as possible throughout Civil War. All the characters are generally neutral with their comments on the state of the country, with Lee, Joel and Jessie all coming from red states [Colorado, Florida and Missouri].
We never get an official reason why the President has taken advantage of his position or how California and Texas were chosen to be the heads of the rebel alliance. Victims and antagonists range everywhere from southern to liberal to people of color.
If there’s a political message here, it’s just the standard “war is hell” variety. The whole two hours are spent in the shoes of the journalists and how tense and dangerous it is to shoot live footage and candid photos of history in the making.
In an era where anyone with a public blog or video channel can be considered a reporter, I can see why critics are favoring Civil War. Its stark presentation of in-battle violence uses the camera as the eyes of the photographers.
The real reason to see Garland’s film, especially on the big screen, is for the truly incredible sound design, which caused my seat to vibrate consistently for most of the third act. As for the script, focusing on being unbiased ultimately causes the themes to end up coming across a bit hollow and have us wonder if we would care about these characters if the action wasn’t so exciting.
All the same, if you want to keep the theater experience hype currently going since Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part 2 and Adam Wingard’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Civil War would do the trick.