“Civil War,” the latest (and supposedly final) film from writer/director Alex Garland has been the subject of much controversy, none of which is deserved. With the premise of a modern-day Civil War after an extremely divided America finally splits apart, one would think the film explores divisiveness, but it doesn’t. In fact, the film never explains what caused the nation to split apart, nor does it care to spend any of its runtime on the subject matter it was marketed as being inspired by. All the film is is… a movie about photographers.
Garland’s dystopian road trip movie was excruciatingly boring, to the point where my eyes were about to sink into my skull while watching. Nothing of consequence happens for the first hour and thirty minutes. Four war photographers embark on a trek across America, never talking about the divisiveness and rather discussing the philosophies behind their profession. Whenever a suspenseful scene actually happens (and it almost never does), it’s utterly forgettable and unremarkable.
Speaking of the characters, I despised nearly every one of them. I don’t remember their names nor do I care to look them up, so I will refer to each of them by the actors’ names. Kirsten Dunst is the lead, a seasoned photographer who’s learned to be extremely cold in order to take the most visceral pictures possible. Cailee Spaeny is a young photographer who deeply admires Dunst and over the course of the film learns to be emotionally distant like her. Stephen McKinley Henderson is an old man who rides along with them as they consistently berate him for being old and feeble and slow and pathetic. And Wagner Moura is there also.
The single interesting character was one who’s only in the film for five minutes: Jesse Plemons as an unstable soldier who has the photographers at gunpoint. He was compelling for two reasons: one, because Plemons is a master thespian, and two, because I was praying he would execute the photographers to end the brutal misery that is this alleged motion picture.
The character writing is staggeringly awful. Firstly, there’s almost no character development outside of a pathetic attempt at the hardened master-naive pupil dynamic between Dunst and Spaeny, which has been done to death and done better almost every time. Secondly, the characters are so unbelievably stupid and impulsive with all their decisions. They consistently enter scenarios that they should know are dangerous but they proceed through anyway. One could argue that’s because they’re so devoted to their jobs, but at several points all they’re doing is driving through a dangerous place exclusively to get from point A to point B without the need to take photos.
The worst instance of this occurs midway through the film in what is the single most head-bangingly irritating scene I’ve been subjected to in recent memory. At one point, a vehicle drives up to the truck containing our four leads, and as generic banter ensues (we’ll delve deeper into the horrendous dialogue in a moment), a passenger from each one of the trucks randomly decide to crawl into the other respective truck through the car windows. They’re all laughing and smiling and having a jolly ol’ time… in execution this was painfully wishy-washy and happy-go-lucky, demolishing any remnant of logic.
After seeing “Civil War,” I’m not sure if Alex Garland has ever listened to real human conversations before, because the dialogue in this film is bafflingly repugnant. Sometimes the characters go on lengthy pretentious monologues that no human would ever go on, other times they speak in lines so juvenile that they feel like placeholders for a 1980s Schwarzenegger action flick, and other times they spew some of the most melodramatic lines I have ever heard. Seriously, the melodrama is so palpable that it feels like it leaps off the screen, latches onto your head like the facehugger from “Alien,” and shoots acid down your throat.
Also, in regards to the script, I have a sneaking suspicion it was at most fifty pages. For context, the film is about 110 minutes, and since screenplays are normally one page per one minute of screentime, I would initially expect this film’s script to be around 110 pages, but that can’t be. The film is overstuffed to the brim with B-roll. Literal dozens of minutes of shots just lingering on the environment, as if this is the world of “Blade Runner” rather than parts of a random forest outside Atlanta, where this was actually filmed. There is almost no story to this movie, so little that it could barely even fit into a short film, so Garland clearly said, “okay, we’ll make this into a feature by making every scene at least three minutes too long and intercut them with shots of trees.”
After reading and watching several other reviews of “Civil War,” I recognized how, without fail, each critic praised Rob Hardy’s cinematography. Well, you’re not going to read that here. I’ll be the proud outlier. This film is visually repulsive. It looks like Zack Snyder’s abominable “Army of the Dead,” as almost every shot has the most narrow field of view possible. At least 80% of the frame in each shot is out of focus, making for an eternally distracting and irritating visual style that often made the film hard to watch. To make the visuals even stranger, there is consistently a strange rainbow-like outlining around all the figures.
Beyond Jesse Plemons, the only other compliment I can bestow upon “Civil War” is that there are some rare occasions of a so-bad-it’s-good factor, where I couldn’t help but gleefully chuckle at some of the absurdity. In fact, people in my theater were laughing at points in the film that were supposed to be serious, so I know I’m not the only one. The last five minutes when Kirsten Dunst’s character makes a (no spoilers) selfless decision was particularly hysterical.
With “Civil War,” Alex Garland proves he’s been a hack all along. I never found “Ex Machina” to be all that interesting, unlike most people, but like most people I disliked “Annihilation” and thoroughly despised “Men.” Yet he hasn’t made anything as putrefying as “Civil War.” You know a filmmaker’s bad when they somehow get worse with each project. After colossal, unholy, wretched train-wrecks like “Madame Web,” “Drive-Away Dolls,” and now this abomination, the first third of 2024 has proven to be… tough for movies. Really, really tough. One great movie (“Dune: Part Two,” of course) is not enough to satisfy moviegoers when it’s surrounded by a sea of borderline unwatchable motion pictures.
D
Great review and comically cynical