After a pivotal maneuver in the Second American Civil War, the president (Nick Offerman) prepares his address to the fractured nation that the military has pushed back against the western forces of California and Texas as well as crippling the Florida Alliance.  North of DC, in New York, journalists Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura), accompanied by tagalongs Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), begin their roundabout journey to the capital to interview the president.  Their tour of the war-torn country does little to prepare them for the battlefield that has overtaken the city while the Western Forces make their final effort to overthrow the government. 

Returning to A24 for his fourth directorial feature, Alex Garland’s Civil War premiered at South by Southwest where it earned its director a nomination for the Audience Award. The 109 minute film was a buzzy title from its announcement, and the media campaign ahead of it was riddled with inaccuracies from an originally reported false runtime of close to three hours to more recently misconstruing Garland’s statement that this would be his final directorial effort. It is ironic, then, that the film follows a team of journalists when so much of the film’s leadup was misreported. 

The film starts off strong, drawing a line in the sand between true patriotism and violent extremism. It does this during a protest over water distribution when a runner with the American Flag charges the tanker truck, waving the flag, and moments later there is an explosion. It is a teased-out idea of something we are already experiencing today in the country, highlighting the disparity between what the flag stood for and how it has been morphed by the far right to a not-quite terrorist symbol, but when it is displayed in excess – or, more explicitly, brandished as a weapon to, say, beat back Capitol police – the flag is no longer a sign of pride that it once was; rather a reason for worry and a cause for unease. But when this scene is examined, it makes little sense. It has to be assumed that the aid workers are from the Western Forces since they are attacked by someone with a flag with a full field of stars as opposed to only two, but in the aftermath, their police officers certainly do not seem interested in helping the civilians. They care for their own, so even this fleet of renegade soldiers out to help the everyman, when faced with crisis, will do little to help. 

Civil War is an almost out-of-body experience, and not in the way it is intended to be. For the domestic audience, it feels like watching a politically charged foreign film without the history or the context of the movement to better understand the nuance of the script.  This very well could be attributed to the fact that the writer/director is British, and despite finding a safe haven for his work with US-based A24, he retains his British citizenship.  Now, of course, it is not unusual for the United States to meddle in the business of its friends and neighbors, but to present this film as a cautionary tale to the nation would be akin to someone like Michael Bay directing a film about Brexit, Liz Truss, or the floundering influence of the monarchy.  It just does not jive. Further, much of the lead-up to the release was toiling over what would cause deep blue California and deep red Texas to join together to fight the federal government.  Do not expect to find an answer in Garland’s hollow film, the basis of this war is hardly explored and there is no world-building here at all.  Narratively, Garland sets an empty stage for his film to play out on, but he has such a smug and self-important attitude like he is actually saying something – like he is actually making an argument – that this film angers for all the wrong reasons.  He has no skin in this game, he sat an ocean away on his keyboard and typed up an outline that, after the incredible step down in quality that was Men (2022), only A24 would agree to produce.  Robert Eggers, he is not.  Even The Daniels, he is not, so A24 does not need to worry about him flying the coop anytime soon as they are probably the only distributor left willing to scrounge around for couch nickels to give his films any kind of respectable release after this massive downward trajectory seems to be more of a pattern than a singular misstep. 

What is most frustrating about the film is that Garland said it was born out of anger, but the only anger felt by the audience is that their time has been wasted.  This film is not the left vs right rage bate that the purposefully incendiary title led us to believe, but honestly, a film that presented an argument so heavily weighted that it alienated even those in favor of the film’s stance – think Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023) – would have been a more enjoyable cinematic experience. Instead, Garland leaves so much unsaid, not for us to draw our own conclusions, but because he is afraid to say anything at all.  Civil War is not just dull, but it is shockingly devoid of any real commentary or message while holding itself in the same esteem as if it were a searing expose of abuse of power or crimes against humanity.  As presented, Garland seems at most mildly agitated at the state of affairs, but he certainly does not present any solutions here and instead presents mostly aimless rambling. 

What few details he does share are delivered in clunky bits of exposition which are never expanded upon further for audiences to understand the broader context of this not-so-distant future in which the film is set. By the book, it is smart writing that he does not have journalists explaining to other journalists things that they should already know, but it is bad writing because it is only half telling to the audience and absolutely no showing.  The biggest example is when Sammy casually remarks that the president is in his third term. Cinematographer Rob Hardy shoots it in such a way that we can practically feel Garland elbowing us in the ribs like Jacob Marley rattling his chains going “See! See! This is the dystopian future you are heading towards!”  The problem is that this film picks up, narratively, about three years too late. We know nothing of the political landscape here or how the nation got to this point, and while it is mentioned that there have been drone strikes initiated on domestic soil, their target is not disclosed. We can infer that it is against the Wester Forces, but to disparage that action would be the same as questioning the morality of the Northern Army firing against the Southern Army in the actual Civil War. As with the opening suicide bombing, everything is so muddied when examined and Garland continually refuses to give us any of the context we need to come to a decision, yet he berates us for not choosing a side at the same time.  Civil War is trying to dismantle the idea that both sides are bad, while presenting a scenario where, quite literally, both sides are bad. Ultimately, the President’s record is the key to unlocking the real thesis of the film, but he is treated like an empty threat, bandied about like some anonymous boogeyman and no one in this film seems to care at all about the politics of it, they are just blanketly angry at everything. While it is okay to be angry about so many things that it boils over into just general disgust and rage, Garland, as the filmmaker, is not afforded that luxury and he owes us a more pointed argument because as presented these characters seem to have nothing that truly drives them. They are without conviction in a world, much like our own striated reality, that demands if you do not take action, you at least stand for something. The only real exception to this is an unnamed, xenophobic at best, racist at worst solider (Jesse Plemmons) who shows up for a single scene late in the film.

There is so much to be angry about be it the deteriorating middle class, surging homelessness and poverty, crumbling infrastructure, the systematic underfunding of immigration programs so that they can be weaponized and dismantled, or the refusal to investigate alternative energy to name just a few, and Civil War bristles up against many of those ideas, but weaves them into the background instead of putting them in the spotlight.  Had the film adopted a format similar to Louis Malle’s God’s Country (1985) about how changes in economic policy had abandoned a once prosperous farming community in Minnesota, it could have actually said something. Sure, this is fiction and Malle’s is a work of documentary, but the cast is comprised of journalists yet they seem totally uninterested in the various scenarios they find themselves entangled. Further, Garland has proven to be a legible filmmaker, even when he is angry.  Sunshine (2007), granted a film he only wrote, scratches at ideas of climate change, and while it is also through a much more sci-fi lens, this is a director who is most at home in the endless freedom which even grounded sci-fi allows and setting this latest film in such a grounded reality seems to have been too much of a challenge. Ex Machina (2014), his directorial debut, is undoubtedly questioning the rise of AI, and his follow-up, Annihilation (2018), is furious about the lack of care veterans have upon returning home while also addressing the vengeance of a neglected environment.  Even Men, as basic and as simple as its thesis was, appears to be a rich tome compared to the vast emptiness of Civil War if for no other reason than it is so much more visually lush and full of lore and symbols that draw the audience in. 

Garland does circle a point at about the 1/3rd mark of the film when the journalists come across a small town that seems rather normal as people walk the streets, the luxury stores are open, and the children play freely on the manicured lawns.  The residents explain that they choose to keep to themselves, to not get involved in the warfare that ravages the “outside world” and in this sequence, Garland sets his sights on this disenfranchised and the third-party voters.  His point is taught in even the most elementary of civics classes that it is important to get out and vote, but to even those in the back row of their first-grade classrooms scribbling away in the margins of their textbooks, they will still go home with a better understanding of the importance of voting than they would while watching this film.  Garland totally ignores that the two-party system has gotten the country into this divide and the near impossibility of expanding the ballot or switching to preferential accounting.  He totally ignores the fact that an entire generation of young voters feel they have been voting against instead of voting for something.  It is also hard to frame a film around getting involved and taking action when his driving characters are a team of journalists who, according to the Rutgers code of ethics strive to show “impartiality” or just the general journalistic practice of having a detachment from the subject so as not to show sway or influence. That is admirable in a news format, but dull in a narrative one. Stories, however, need to have a purpose, especially one that is trying to teach its audience a lesson. If anything, the film should be fighting in favor of journalism, real journalism which has found itself crippled in the digital age and further dragged through the muddy wake of politicians making their furious rounds on party-friendly outlets labeling actual reporting as “fake news,” but Garland cannot even land that point with precision despite setting himself up perfectly to let Civil War be a case study for the importance of the return of widely available, ethical news being the standard. 

While the film is an absolute failure on a narrative level, and offers little visually – we get it, war is ugly, that does not mean your film needs to be – it does feature some great work in sound. Now, to be fair to Hardy’s work behind the lens for a moment, he makes some creative choices to photograph much of the film as if it were seen through the lens finder of a camera, but it really just does little else than add a grey and blurry quality to the image. Glenn Freemantle, however, provides not just the sound design for the film, but also the only thing of merit here. His work in the major sequences sounds fresh and new to audiences, even – or especially – as far as war films go. Each bullet fired sounds like it is coming from a specific point so it is not just a blanket of noise, but rather a targeted piercing sound that rattles and ricochets against the audience. Later, when the journalist team makes their way to DC under siege, the creaking and groaning of the heavy machinery and the overwhelming and oppressive whirring of helicopters overhead almost overtakes the still-pointed sound of gunfire until the soldiers bring out even larger artillery. Then, everything becomes degrees louder, but no sound is lost in the fury.

This silver lining, unfortunately, just is not enough to save this film. There is a bravado moment as a missile strikes the Lincoln Memorial which should illicit some type of reaction from the audience, but because we are so disconnected from everything leading up to this, we just do not care.  Frankly, with the very real rise of fascism across the various levels of goverment, local to federal to global, it is hard to get wrapped up in Garland’s edgy game of make-believe when less than 3.5 years ago we saw Terry Moran reporting with tears in his eyes live as an insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol Building and Garland cannot even tell us with any certainty what caused the war in his own film. War is the massive result of a flurry of microaggressions, and defunding of the FBI, the domestic drone strikes, and the presidential third term are not the tiny stitches that Garland feels make up his tapestry, but rather three totally separate blankets in and of themselves. Misguided as the mob was back on January 6, 2021, they truly believed that Donald Trump was owed the election and that his false electors should be recognized, so they built some gallows in the shadow of The Capitol Dome to hang the vice president if he did not follow along with their illegal scheme, the Western Forces in Civil War might as well be children sent to bed without dessert for all we know with how unfocused and unstated they are. The little bit of evidence which Garland does string out honestly points more in favor of a both sides are bad, and that it is the exact wishy-washy, head-in-the-sand attitude that got this country into this mess and which Garland appears to be speaking out against. Even a flashy summer blockbuster like Independence Day (1996) or Olympus Has Fallen (2007) – which are just an excuse to eat your weight in popcorn and enjoy some air conditioning – contain more emotionally resonant destruction of American icons than this self-important film.  What a joke!  

Already past the risk of emulating Garland in his rambling anger, to bring the film back into focus, the script is a massive misstep on behalf of the auteur and its poison affects almost every aspect of the film. It fails at delivering on its purposefully incendiary title, unlike Daniel Goldhaber‘s How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) which is not only angry but is actionable as well as emotional, this film plays out like a zombie apocalypse movie, but with no zombies and even less social insight. We should be mad at the end of this film because of its thematics, either because we do not like the reflection we see in the mirror or we feel that Garland is arguing in bad faith and holding up a fun house mirror instead, but we are just mad because it is a poorly made film from a director who has proven he knows how to do better. The should-be-stellar cast is wasted and has no clue how to manage this script and then are further hampered by the road movie format which does not allow their characters to grow or build.  It is a series of unconnected vignettes and Garland runs and hides after realizing he broached the concept that these characters, the infamous Lee or the illustrious Sammy, existed before the events of the film. If he does not know who these people are, how is he to expect his actors to understand their motivations and we in the seats are left with little option other than to forgive their heinous line readings. On a further narrative level, Garland does not even try to save the film by broaching the story that Lee and Joel are seeking to tell which could have lent some framework to this idea and done a great job of showing why this country is angry and how it is responding, but he squanders that chance at fostering understanding and ends his film with a blunt punchline. At the very least, he could have tried to tie together some of these vignettes which, as presented, are all just disembodied sequences from any other war film and set dressed with whatever paraphernalia could have been picked up from Party City on the cheap on July 5.  There are no heroes in this film, and maybe that is the point, but as the credits roll on this lazy piece with yet another glaring song choice that is desperately trying to equate itself with Apocalypse Now (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987) or the like, a quote from – oddly enough – congressional succubus Virginia Foxx comes to mind. “Oh, Shut up! Shut up!”