Civil War

Civil War isn't science fiction-it's speculative reality drawn from the headlines we scroll past every day. Alex Garland has crafted something rare: a war film without glorification, a dystopia without excess. What unfolds is a portrait of America not as it might be, but as it nearly is-fractured by polarization, eroded by propaganda, and abandoned by leadership more concerned with loyalty than legitimacy.

Through the lens of war journalists (played with haunting restraint by Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny), we traverse a country in pieces-some cities crumbling, others clinging to an eerie normalcy. The genius lies in the nuance: this isn't red vs. Blue, good vs. Evil. It's chaos as governance, ideology as identity, and cruelty as currency.

For those watching recent history with a furrowed brow, Civil War lands like a flare in the darkness. It doesn't tell us what to think-it forces us to ask how close we already are. And in doing so, it becomes not just a film, but a quiet, urgent warning.

Watch it while it's still fiction.

B. Mitchell / J. Vail.

There are some tricky reviews here and they all have a few things in common. They're all stuck on the economical and social, if not geographical logistics of a union between Florida, Texas and California, and they're all written by Americans. As someone not connected to the States I can say I think their perspective is smeared. This movie isn't about how certain political alliances came together or why certain people engaged in conflict, testified to by the fact that you don't ever even learn the president's name let alone the political party. You might want more out of the movie asking how all this came to be and you may be asking in hope of gaining allegiance to one side of the conflict or the other. The fact is this movie is not About the Why, the How or any of that. This movie is a war documentary that happens to be placed in an environment that you are familiar with. And in that respect it is superb. The acting is excellent and as required, the cinematography is very very strong. It's well paced and well written and gives you everything it promises. I think Kirsten Dunst is not as good an actor as she thinks she is but that hardly tracks from the powerful collective performance of the four main cast. This film is about the visceral and unsettling reality of conflict, life and death, and it's brought to you in a familiar place not 10,000 miles away in a foreign land. A choice that makes the impact all the more real. Sure, doing this runs the risk of the film seeming gimmicky or like any other disaster film but I think it's side steps that with grace and deft. What you are left with his real drama, real moments, real lives and the brutality and human and inhumanity of war. Please just forget the question as to whether this could happen in this exact way and just appreciate the world in which it did.

I had high hopes for this movie as Alex Garland rarely disappoints,. But its a very shallow script like a six part mini series where the action scenes have been edited into a movie. There is no explanation of why there is a civil war, who is fighting who, what the outcome is or anything else that might cast some light on the situation. We just follow some unimportant characters through some hairy experiences. The movie should have been a mini series with a credible story line and a lot more characters elucidating the factions and their motivations. A week after watching it I had forgotten it! Don't waste your time.

There is a good movie to be made about the polarisation and aggression of US politics leading to civil war. This was not it. Uses a grossly undeveloped political scenario as an excuse to show us routine, gratuitous violence and contrived relationships. Casting an actress who looks 14 as a 23 year old was a big mistake and pushing her from wide eyed innocence through a ridiculous, unbelievable journey to awakening ambition via horror was crudely handled. Taking photos of people while they suffer and die is obscene and the pain and gore of violence was trivialised, not dignified by this sad movie.

There tend to be two groups of people who dislike this movie:

• Those who were expecting a movie about war.

• Those who were expecting a movie about politics.

This movie isn't about war or politics at all, it's an adventure story about a group of war photographers. Very little is ever discussed or explained about the war itself, how it started, nor the political affiliations of those involved. The story is mostly about the photographers and how the journey affects them as people.

Through various misadventures the viewer begins to piece together a rough picture of how the conflict is going, but it's never really the focus of the story. If you go in expecting every question to be answered, you've missed the point of the movie. If you were bored by (or entirely ignored) the characters' conversations, and only paid attention when there was killing going on, you REALLY missed the point of the movie.

Overall, I found this to be a very moving film, with compelling performances by all the leads and a superb script. This movie succeeds at what it sets out to accomplish, though what it accomplishes might not be to every viewer's taste.