Vague Visages’ Civil War review contains minor spoilers. Alex Garland’s 2024 movie features Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura and Cailee Spaeny. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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The central preoccupation throughout Alex Garland’s work is the manner in which society will receive its downfall. No matter whether it’s at the hands of artificial intelligence (Ex Machina, 2014), a plague that turns infected people into rage-filled zombies (28 Days Later, 2002) or a maniacal religious fundamentalism that aims to halt scientific research into humanity’s survival (Sunshine, 2007), the English filmmaker’s screenplays always return to fatalist examinations of our bleak future, just as it’s coming into view. While Civil War continues this thematic obsession, the 2024 film appears to be the first Garland feature that’s behind-the-curve in the way it unpacks societal divisions, at least from the outside, where its dystopia appears to be a deliberate invocation of the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack and the politician who provoked it. Set in a not-too-distant future, Civil War tracks a group of photojournalists risking their lives on a cross-country road trip to Washington D.C., in the hope of interviewing the despotic U.S. president before a rebel uprising topples him. 

Civil War isn’t a film about progressivism versus Trumpism, even if Garland’s own statements in the weeks following the premiere may have reduced it to a lazy, heavy-handed political commentary in many eyes. And while I don’t fully buy the argument that this story is entirely divorced from contemporary American politics — through interview prep scenes, viewers receive expository glimpses at this world’s horrors, such as an “Antifa massacre” and the abolition of the FBI and presidential term limits, both invoking threats from Donald Trump — the near-total obfuscation of the climate around the characters feels like the definitive final statement for a writer who continuously returns to examine the complete breakdown of society. What spurred these horrors is irrelevant; the real tension is whether the journalists will survive.

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With 28 Days Later, Garland leaned heavily on exposition so that viewers could receive broader context than his characters. In Civil War, there are several unexplained loose ends as to how the country got divided, and why seemingly political adverse states became allies — all designed to leave the audience as confused as Cillian Murphy’s protagonist in the aforementioned 2002 writing collaboration with director Danny Boyle. After all, when one needs to rely on survival instincts, there’s no point sitting around and wondering about the past, and that purity of a survival thriller narrative — unburdened by the necessities of in-depth world building — is a rush Garland appears to have been chasing throughout his career.

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What further muddies the water is telling this story from the point of view of photojournalists — individuals who task themselves with getting footage of bloodshed on both sides, seemingly divorced from any allegiances for the sake of access to a good story. As Lee, Kirsten Dunst is every bit as emotionally detached from her surroundings as her character in Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (2011), a surprisingly effective companion piece about accepting that the worst thing could happen at any moment. The only thing that drives her and colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) is a good story, and after getting a tip that the Western forces are at Washington D.C.’s door, they embark on a road trip to see if they can try get an interview with a president known for shooting journalists on sight. 

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Joining the protagonists for the journey are a seasoned newsroom staffer with decades of experience (Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy) and an ambitious, idealistic young photographer (Cailee Spaeny as Jessie), both of whom function as neat representatives of different eras of journalism. The elder statesman comes from a time when news organizations had dozens of reporters of his calibre on staff, whereas the newcomer is from a generation who can only get their foot in the door by exploiting their trauma for clicks. In-between are two reporters who regularly task themselves with freelance missions which put their lives at risk; they discuss the importance — and the thrill — of chasing such stories, but they largely choose their assignments based on how they can boost their careers going forward, often talking in terms of legacy before they’ve even finished the job.

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Civil War is about the importance of journalism to a certain extent, but to call it a love letter as many have is to overlook Garland’s nihilistic interpretation of the profession. The only hopeful thing about it is that, even within a dystopian society where reporters are routinely shot, there are still plenty of paying jobs seemingly left in the industry. The writer/director appears to put forward the idea that detachment is necessary for success, but he lays it bare in the starkest of terms, whether it’s Joel’s seeming indifference as bodies pile up or Lee deleting photos of dead loved ones to free up space that could be better used for capturing war crimes. Spaeny’s Jessie, in a lesser film, would function as an audience surrogate — someone rightly horrified as to what she’s being exposed to. Perhaps the darkest aspect of Civil War is how her idealism is replaced with the lessons she’s taught on how to make a name for herself as a reporter. By the climax, it becomes clear that Jessie’s detachment has begun, and it’s the only truly heartbreaking aspect of a narrative that deliberately aims to numb viewers to the surrounding horrors.

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Film critic Siddhant Adlakha notes in his Civil War review that the film’s genius is largely thanks to a British filmmaker shooting America in the same way Hollywood routinely depicts non-white countries in action movies. No, Garland doesn’t deploy a piss-yellow filter, but by refusing to offer the audience any concessions to better understand the political situation on the ground which triggered the conflict, he takes aim at the same kind of sensationalized filmmaking with narratives set in the Middle East or Latin America, where political context is notably absent, abstracted into mindless set pieces. The context is essentially the same amount one would probably get in a condensed 60-second news report — the maximum amount of time western media outlets would devote to this story if it were taking place in the developing world. That Civil War functions successfully as distinctively American action cinema, even as it’s directly repudiating the genre’s tendency for jingoism, is one of its greatest successes. I would never compare a heavy-handed writer like Garland — whose prior attempt at social commentary, Men (2022), might be the worst of this decade so far — to a more skilled satirist like Paul Verhoeven, but he does show a similar talent for genre literacy in Civil War, with the final act playing as well on face value as it does when considering the Hollywood action traits it subverts.

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Civil War is a lot smarter than meets the eye, and the film is far more incisive in its cultural critique than its director’s simplistic interview comments may make it seem. Garland is extremely a hit-or-miss filmmaker, but this is his first movie in a while to properly strike a nerve, rather than just getting on my nerves.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) is a film and TV critic based in Manchester, England. By day, he interviews the great and the good of the film world for Zavvi, and by night, he criticizes their work as a regular reviewer at outlets including The Film Stage and Looper.

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