Civil War: ‘OK, what kind of American are you?’
The riveting near-future drama Civil War is a confronting take on what might have been the next step after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
The riveting near-future drama Civil War is a confronting take on what might have been the next step after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. It’s a work of fiction, written and directed by English novelist and filmmaker Alex Garland, that is chillingly close to what could become reality.
There is little backstory, so viewers can come up with their own theories on what has happened and why. The film opens with the US approaching the climax of a second civil war. The 19 secessionist states (eight more in the 1861-65 civil war) are led by California and Texas under the banner of Western Front. Their well-armed forces – tanks, helicopter gunships – are closing in on Washington DC, where the President (Nick Offerman) is holed up.
While the link to the Capitol attack is obvious, this film does not play politics. Donald Trump is not mentioned. Whether the President is a Democrat or Republican is unknown.
We learn that he is in a third term, which is unconstitutional under the present arrangements, that he has disbanded the FBI and launched airstrikes on American citizens.
The plot centres on a group of reporters, led by renowned photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), that decides to drive from New York to DC to try to interview the President, who has not spoken to the media in 17 months.
She is joined by Joel (Wagner Moura), a colleague at Reuters news agency, veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who believes the road trip is a suicide pact but doesn’t want to miss the story, and young aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Sammy isn’t far wrong. The streets are largely empty bar the dead bodies. The landscape looks like a combination of Covid lockdowns and a zombie apocalypse.
Cinematographer Rob Hardy is a long-time collaborator with the director (Ex Machina in 2014, Annihilation in 2018), and some of the images are hard to forget, such as bodies strung up in a roadside car wash.
The heart-racing battle scenes are superbly shot. The live action is interspersed with the black-and-white photos that Lee and Jessie take. They are there, moving towards DC with the secessionist forces, recording history.
“Every time I survived a war zone,” Lee says of her experiences in places such as Iraq, “I thought I was sending a warning back home. But here we are.”
The performances are first rate, especially from Spaeny, who is a long way from her previous role as Priscilla Presley in Priscilla (2023). The final sequence, which unfolds in DC, is also hard to forget, for what happens in the war and for what the journalists do.
The death toll in the civil war – about 620,000 – is more or less equivalent to US losses in all other wars combined. It was about 2 per cent of the population. That conflict between divided Americans comes potently to mind during a pivotal cameo performance by Jesse Plemons, who is Dunst’s husband. (They each received Oscar nominations for Jane Campion’s 2021 drama The Power of the Dog.)
He’s in camouflage, wearing red-tinted sunglasses, leading a group of armed men who are digging a mass grave. The dead are in civilian clothes.
The reporters approach, along with two colleagues they met on the road, one of whom is Asian. The soldier raises his semiautomatic rifle. Joel says, “We are American, OK?” The soldier nods. He looks them over. “OK, what kind of American are you?”
Civil War (MA15+)
109 minutes
In cinemas
★★★★