Is this inevitable? Behind every scene in this film, behind every abandoned vehicle, behind every redneck Billy Bob toting an AK-47 to protect a mini mart, behind every reminder of the Hell on Earth now realized within this dystopian future is one single question: Is this inevitable? Is this what America will look like in 2-4 years?
God, I hope not. But I’d be lying if said it couldn’t happen.
My country is replete with -literally- millions of economically, scientifically, and politically illiterate assholes who are armed to the teeth and only too ready for blood. Every day, they consume information which has only a tangential relationship to fact; it is designed to make them fearful and angry … so they’ll consume more “news.” They question not enough and have convinced themselves they deserve better. On the latter, they may not be wrong, but they never seem to identify correctly any genuine cause for why they should be better off than they are. They just keep getting angrier.
Angry, armed, underinformed, and itching for violence … does that not describe a significant portion of the United States at this very moment? This is what makes Civil War so powerful in my estimation. The film isn’t a shoot-em-up or a video-game simulation of war and body count; this is an intense look at where we well might go as a society within the next half-decade.
Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) is a hardened war photographer. She has already seen enough ugliness in the world to take it all in stride. The suicide bomber who self-detonates thirty feet from the spot where she photographs a NYC protest doesn’t stifle her. She sees to the safety of journalist wannabe Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) and gets right into documenting the horror. Lee MIller is exactly who Jessie wishes to be … if Lee will let her.
The scene is months – years perhaps – beyond the key events that turned the nation against itself. We are past the point of guaranteed anything. Safety? Transportation? Health? These things don’t really exist any longer. The economy is also shot. The egomaniacal would-be dictator of a President (Nick Offerman) is holed-up in the White House while announcing that his forces are defeating the “Western Alliance” – an anti-government army consisting of rebel forces from Texas and California. As the President’s safety is no longer guaranteed, Lee has one purpose: interview the dictator before he’s captured and killed.
None of that will be easy. The barren roads are stalked by Road Warrior-like predators; gasoline can’t be had at any price, and the rule of law has taken a back seat to any local with a high-powered rifle. To get to Washington DC from NYC, the journey requires inroads into Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Quite frankly, if and when Civil War breaks out in the US for real, West Virginia is about the very last place I want to be. But Miller is determined … and so is her “protégé,” so they team with two other journalists, Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) on this suicidal mission.
As if the opening-credits bomber couldn’t underscore the danger by itself, Civil War instantly demonstrates what these four are up against when they stop for gas in Pennsylvania, still 300 miles away from their destination. The three meatheads guarding the station are “peaceful,” if such can ever be said of war-weapon yielding lunatics; they’re at least willing to bargain and pretend civilization can still be had. But the curious Jessie wanders to the car wash station in the back where she finds two men chained, bloody, and hanging by their wrists from the ceiling. She’s horrified. So are we. Meathead #3 points out that he knows the fella on the right. This is not a mark of embarrassment, but a trophy. Who knows what offense was committed? Who knows what politics brought any of these people to where they are now? Within days, the men hanging will be dead, and even if these journalists could object with any effectiveness, there’s nothing they can do to stop the deaths from happening.
This is a lot of what Civil War has to offer. In the scene I described above, we see no direct violence, but 
instead an implied threat and an atmosphere where justice is local and executed by whomever is holding the rifle. And how far are we, really, as a nation, as a people, beyond the point where such can’t happen? This is the strength of the Purge franchise without the idiocy of the Purge rules. How far are you away from murder, really? For some of us, exactly as far as the law allows. Period.
Civil War is not so much a war film as a quiet horror. Our heroes are strictly non-violent observers of truth. And there’s a huge irony in that one of the reasons we as a nation are possibly on the brink of catastrophe is that journalism has failed us. The need to “both sides” candidates, positions, and truth has led to situations where we pretend, for example, that anti-vaxxers have a legitimate position. For a more relevant example, in 2016, we were given a presidential option between Hillary Clinton – an experienced politician, perhaps a little hawkish, carrying the baggage of a poor, but neither illegal nor unprecedented, decision to store government emails on a private server. There was never any danger of Hillary being a dictator, nor getting us into WWIII – and Donald Trump, a narcissistic non-politician jackass and the embodiment of all seven deadly sins. He is almost literally made of baggage. You could reel off a dozen Trump scandals without even scratching the surface. The only proper response to: “Does this man wish to be a dictator?” is “DUH!” Journalists somehow managed to treat these two candidates as equally flawed. Civil War is announcing -in a way- that we are back at the beginning; it is time for us all to observe so that we may evaluate what is truly right and wrong with the country we’ve created.
Civil War is intense and brilliant. It’s a difficult watch if only for those of us who recognize the danger within the otherwise mundane. I knock it slightly for not calling out the forces that got us here, but if you read between the lines, well, “President in his 3rd term” … resembles a dictator … hostile to journalists. These are Trump things. I know the Trump people want to believe they’re Biden or Democrat things, but a Democrat sweep in 2024 creates a 0% chance of fascism. Trump winning in 2024, however? Well, we’d better prepare for fascism and Civil War.
There was once a journalist named Miller
Whose entire life was an elongated thriller
Expected not in her toil
The work found home soil
The steps that bring you back? They’re a killer
Rated R, 109 Minutes
Director: Alex Garland
Writer: Alex Garland
Genre: Our screwed future
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who can see this as a possible future
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People whose understanding of war come from video games
