CIVIL WAR (2024)

My overall view of CIVIL WAR (2024) is basically that it’s really good civil war porn. Otherwise, it’s highly YMMV. Let me explain.

In the movie, four journalists are covering a future American civil war that has an unlikely alliance of Texas and California fighting alongside Florida against the U.S. government. The president (Nick Offerman) is described as a “fascist” who disbanded the FBI and bombed civilians. Otherwise, the causes of the war are mysterious. As the Western Forces close in on Washington, DC, the journalists, currently in New York, decide to go to DC to try to interview the president, who notoriously hates the press.

These include exhausted and bitter veteran Lee (Kirsten Dunst), adrenaline junkie Joel (Wagner Moura), old crusty newspaperman Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and novice reporter Jesse (Cailee Spaeny). Along the way, they travel through various set pieces typical of civil conflict–distrustful locals, unreal inflation for basic necessities like fuel, burning buildings, mass graves, lynchings, militiamen who regard their enemy as inhuman, execution of war prisoners, and ever-present gunfire on the horizon as the front line grows steadily closer.

I was pretty excited about the movie. I’d written a novel about a second American civil war called OUR WAR that freaked out a lot of people, so I’d done a lot of homework on the topic. What would an actual civil war look like? It’s a fascinating if very grim subject. Alex Garland wrote and directed, and I’d enjoyed his 28 DAYS LATER and SUNSHINE.

The result for me was a serious mixed bag.

What I liked: The war set-pieces are fairly realistic, the depiction of the horrors of civil war are chilling, and the depiction of war reporters was pretty spot on, reminiscent of movies like THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY and WELCOME TO SARAJEVO. Telling the story through their nominally objective lens was a good approach (though it has a cost, which I’ll get into). The movie takes its time with little weird moments, with possibly the most chilling being a militiaman (Jesse Plemons) responding to Joel telling him he’s an American by asking, “Okay. But what kind of American are you?” In a civil war, that is the big question, and unfortunately there is no right answer that will guarantee you go on living.

What I didn’t like: Garland made a movie about a civil war but left out anything about its causes, probably because he didn’t want to offend anyone. For example, there is a reference to an “Antifa massacre,” but it’s unclear if Antifa massacred people or were massacred. Very clever, but as a result I didn’t feel invested in any of it. Was I supposed to be happy or sad about the war’s outcome? No idea. The reporters offer an objective lens, but an objective lens to what? They have few opinions of their own, and we never get to know any of the combatants or why they’re doing all this.

CIVIL WAR is supposed to be a cautionary tale, but this takes the artistic balls to address the issues of polarization and radicalism head on. The result is less cautionary tale and more civil war porn–mass graves, lynchings, and so on–without exploring the hatred and resulting dehumanization that would cause them. It just feels like it doesn’t have real integrity but instead the writer thinking, “Hey, a mass grave would be cool.” This even extends to the deaths of certain characters. One is dramatically mourned, the other is left on the floor, because that’s what the movie needed at that time.

Those criticisms aside, overall I liked the movie quite a bit and in fact found it riveting. Not as a cautionary tale but for its direction and crazy action. It was a fun watch, but that was a bit of the problem. A movie that wants to take the idea of a second American civil war seriously shouldn’t be all that fun.