Civil War review: dystopian journalism thriller in need of a thesis

In A24’s new dystopian thriller Civil War, you can almost hear writer / director Alex Garland working through a mountain of complex ideas about how the United States could collapse and what it means for combat reporters to document humanity’s ugliest moments. But rather than articulating nuanced thoughts about America’s political instability or the role journalists play in society, Civil War plays it safe with a story so hesitant to say anything meaningful that it often feels like Garland is out of his narrative depth.

Civil War is sprinkled with details alluding to how the United States descends into widespread chaos after an unnamed president (Nick Offerman) refuses to leave the Oval Office following his second term. But the film’s real focus is fixed on a group of journalists documenting what’s become of the country in the time since a coalition of rebelling states known as the Western Front has gone to war with the federal government. After years of covering other brutal conflicts, there’s very little about the US’s second civil war that seems to rattle seasoned journalists Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura), and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). But navigating America’s new reality is much more difficult for people like aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), an audience surrogate who seems dead set on making horror movie-level dumb decisions that push the film forward.

With much of the nation’s infrastructure destroyed and countless towns decimated, there is no real sense of security — even for wealthier people in relatively stable places like New York City. Things are even more apocalyptic in Washington, DC, where the president and his loyalists have holed up in the White House as much of the surrounding city burns. As dangerous as traveling to the capital would be, Lee and her peers can’t help but feel like it’s a story they need to be there for, despite not having a solid plan to get the president to agree to an interview. But the dream of securing that scoop is enough to convince them to set out on a potentially deadly cross-country road trip.

Though Garland’s script is clearly inspired by pieces of American history like Donald Trump’s presidency and certain states’ flirtations with secession, you’re not meant to know many of the details that led up to Civil War’s eponymous confrontation. We’re never shown scenes of the “antifa massacre” that Lee covered earlier in her career or told which political party the sitting president belongs to, because those are things that everyone in the film knows. Instead, the movie uses its main characters to explore how journalism can — but sometimes does not — help people make sense of their reality when it feels like it’s being torn apart.

The movie’s trio of older journalists paints a fascinating picture of what the profession is and what it can do to people over time. Dunst leads with a stony hauntedness that makes Lee feel like a person weary after years of compartmentalizing the images in her mind. Both Lee and Sammy vacillate between grim stoicism and steeliness in ways that speak to their deep understanding of the danger they’re putting themselves in just by identifying themselves as press at a time when it’s not uncommon for journalists to be shot on sight just for doing their jobs. They, like interviewer Joel, also know that there is power in being able to see history reported out as it’s happening. But Civil War uses Joel to complicate its framing of journalists as heroes and emphasize how easy it can be for some media types to become fixated on thrill-seeking rather than telling important stories.

Civil War has the makings of a fascinating examination of the role of journalists as chroniclers of history as the reporters first encounter hollowed-out strip malls and militia-controlled towns that all feel like photo-worthy snapshots of what’s happening across the country. But as arresting as Civil War’s imagery is, the movie becomes narratively hollow once the journalists start making pit stops to join groups of WF soldiers on missions to root out enemy combatants.

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War correspondents are sent to the front lines because that kind of proximity gives them the ability to report their stories with an invaluable level of firsthand experience and perspective. But Civil War never manages to articulate anything solid about how the subjects of Lee’s photos feel about the larger society-in-collapse situation they’re living through. Garland seems to be interested in getting viewers to contemplate how, conceptually, all wars can be considered fights between groups of people fearing for their lives. That’s what a WF sniper duo tells Lee as the journalists unknowingly wander into a standoff between the soldiers and an unseen deadshot barricaded inside a house.

But much in the same way that calling the real Civil War the “war of northern aggression” obscures the Confederacy’s pro-slavery motivations, Civil War’s attempt at waxing philosophic about how characters on both sides of the conflict are just Americans trying to survive makes it seem as if Garland doesn’t have the confidence to engage with the substance of the images he’s cavalier about putting on-screen.

As Civil War’s journalists follow soldiers into battle with their cameras at the ready, the movie intensifies its action but also slows its visuals down to dramatically staged freeze-frames in order to show you the photos Lee and Jessie are capturing. As action set pieces meant to make you feel stomach-turning peril, those scenes work because Garland shoots them as desperate, chaotic situations where it’s never certain that people will survive.

But many of the still images Civil War draws your attention to — of Black people being immolated, lynched bodies hanging along freeways, crowds of displaced people begging for water — echo very specific historical events. And that history feels like it’s being evoked for shock value rather than substance because of how insistent the film is about leaving much of the social and political context building up to the war unexamined. This becomes even more the case as Civil War begins to incorporate archival protest and riot footage attributed to news sources like The Associated Press and Getty as well as far-right influencer Andy Ngo.

Civil War is largely shot from Lee’s perspective, and there’s an argument to be made that she’s not thinking about those things as she contemplates her role in mentoring the next generation of journalists. Lee, Civil War tells us, is a consummate war correspondent like the real Lee Miller, who reported on World War II for Vogue. But for all the time Civil War uses the pair to gesture at the importance of photojournalism, the film never seems interested in pondering what it means to take a “good” photo of war or what is being celebrated when we award journalists for capturing images of people in their most desperate moments.

Garland understands that there is an exploitative element to the journalistic act of turning people’s images and voices into content. And yet, that concept goes unexamined as Civil War races to a climactic finish that, while haunting, feels like a letdown in its matter-of-fact simplicity. Civil War is working with an abundance of powerful ideas worth mulling over, but the film itself isn’t interested in thinking all that deeply.