Civil War Movie Review Rating:
Star Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman
Director: Alex Garland
Civil War Movie Review (Photo Credit – IMDb)What’s Good: Garland’s direction is still as sublime as before, conjuring great visuals and a powerful atmosphere.
What’s Bad: The film lacks context for its world and characters; only the most superficial remnants of conflict and motivation propel them forward.
Loo Break: The film has a very paper-thin plot, so you can skip some of the vignettes and still get everything the movie is trying to say, which is not much.
Watch or Not?: Like Garland’s films, Civil War is still quite enjoyable and will ignite conversation.
Language: English (with subtitles).
Available At: Theaters
Runtime: 109 Minutes.
User Rating:
Alex Garland is undoubtedly one of the most exciting filmmakers of the 21st century, and his career, as his films, has been anything but orthodox, having started as a novelist to jump into writing films and then directing them. Civil War, his latest cinematic effort, pulls from everything Garland has done in the past, and while his ability to craft powerful atmospheres and enchanting visuals is still there, Garland has been losing the thread when it comes to telling captivating stories.
Civil War could be considered a piece of speculative fiction, in the same vein as something like “The Man in the High Castle,” a novel written by Philip K. Dick, where World War II went the opposite way for the Allies and left a defeated USA divided by its conquerors; The Nazi, and the Japanese Empire. Like that by Philip K. Dick, Garland tries to transport us to another reality where the USA is suffering a second civil war, changing the landscape of the country forever once again, with states like California and Texas becoming allies and fighting against the established government.
This idea sounds perfect on paper, but sadly, Garland has chosen to not enter any details regarding how the reality of his film ended up in the situation. Instead, the movie is, in fact, a character study centered around the character of Lee Smith, a photojournalist who is on a mission to get a picture of the President of the United States before he is killed or arrested. That is it. The movie wants to avoid dwelling on the world that the characters are living in, and it also refuses to examine the characters beyond a very surface level, so the result is a movie with nothing to say.
This is a double-edged sword because while the movie has nothing to say about anything, it serves as a canvas so the audience can fill the blank spaces with their biases. This results in many conversations about what the movie wants to say, its message, and its message, but in reality, the film only serves as a reflection of the audience. If that is the film’s point, it was successful, but that doesn’t make it a good movie either; it is just a concept with several ideas thrown at the screen without structure or purpose.
The setting and the concept of a modern civil war in the USA are wasted, as it doesn’t matter that the war is happening in that country. The movie could have done precisely what it does with its characters and story in any other place, and it wouldn’t have mattered at all. Without context for the world or the characters, the story lacks resonance, and it works mainly as a series of vignettes instead of a full-fleshed story. Of course, creating an actual fictional world that still manages to find a balance between sides of the conflict and being separated from real-world politics would be more challenging, but it would have been much more satisfying.
Civil War Movie Review: Star PerformanceIt is hard to talk about the characters in Civil War because they are so undefined, and this makes them incredibly superficial, which is sad because, in previous films like Ex Machina and Annihilation, Garland has proved that he can create compelling characters; here, these main characters are just glimpses of something, in this case, journalists, but they never act like journalists at all. Kirsten Dunst does excellently, but she never feels alive, and that is the point, as I believe that if the movie is about something, it is about journalism and desensitization in the media.
However, those themes are never developed, and the characters, like every other theme in the movie, are more of a footnote than something relevant to the plot or the story. In the end, Cailee Spaeny does the best at being a sort of surrogate for the audience, but there is so little to learn that her inclusion, other than proving that the cycle of violence never ends, feels wasted. Wagner Moura also does his best with a foolish and useless character. There are a lot of useless characters in this film.
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Civil War Movie Review: Direction, MusicGarland made a splash with Ex Machina, a captivating science fiction film with gorgeous visual effects and a powerful atmosphere that took Garland to the Oscars, and he has been riding that wave ever since. The director’s best work is Annihilation, a movie that offers impressive visuals and performances, but since then, it seems Garland can only hit the visual department and not much else. In Civil War, Garland even stumbles regarding the visual aspect of the film because while this is A24’s most expensive film, it still feels too small for the story the film wants to tell.
The scale feels small, and the world never feels real in any shape or form. There are a couple of scenes with fabulous sound design, but nothing really matters because of a lack of context in these action scenes. Garland tries to save the film in its third act but fails to create a scenario that feels totally unrealistic and cheap in many ways. Garland didn’t know how to make the proper scale for the project, or maybe he didn’t have enough resources. In recent interviews, he has declared that he has fallen out of love with filmmaking, and this movie is proof of that; there is barely Ex Machina energy left in here.
Civil War Movie Review: The Last WordCivil War is still a fascinating film, not because of what it says but because of what the people will say about it. Sadly, the film is incomplete and will need ideas from outside to give it any relevance. Garland might be taking a break from filmmaking, and he really needs it because he has been running on autopilot for his last two films. Dunst and Spaeny do great, and Henderson is the heart of the film, but because the characters are so paper thin, not much can be said about them. This is a proper miss.
Civil War TrailerCivil War released on 19th April 2024.
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The post Civil War Movie Review: Alex Garland Returns With A24’s Biggest Film, But The Film’s Refusal To Examine Its Characters And World Makes It Empty appeared first on Koimoi.
