Directed by:
Alex GarlandScreenplay:
Alex GarlandCinematography:
Rob HardyCast:
Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, Nelson Lee, Sonoya Mizuno, Jefferson White (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
An adrenaline-fueled thrill ride through a near-future fractured America balanced on the razors edge. (A24)
Videos (3)
Reviews (13)
Alex Garland's awkward Salvador. In it there was a sentence that you have to get closer to get to the truth, or if you want reality, then fidelity. If you get too close, you die. Here, the distance wasn’t ideal, whether due to poorly written and cast characters, or the vagueness of initially heroizing the impartiality of a war journalist’s badge, only to later point out the dangers of national polarization (as someone humorously remarked, putting together California and Texas is like a coalition between Sweetgreen and KFC). If the peak of the intense episodes was to be Plemons’ lime-like quality, then the connections between them, meant to profile and develop characters, didn’t set the bar very high. The final militant pornography from D.C. was just missing Gerard Butler, on the right side, of course.
()
A violent nightmare that I dreamed for some unknown reason. Kind of like Children of Men from Wish. Garland somewhat mechanically adorns his shady road movie with random images of a broken America. A number of them are impressive, with powerful visuals and staging (mainly the scene with Jesse Plemons). The film manages to induce anxiety to the point of nausea from a cruel world that is not so far from The Walking Dead in its absence of morality and prevalence of brutality. But…the whole thing seems terribly gratuitous; for all of the questions that the film wants to raise, Garland’s work just shrugs its shoulders and wagers on another spectacular composition. The characters are flat and the ethics and psychology of the war reporters come across as very superficial research. There is little in the way of Nietzschean gazing into the abyss in this film, which paradoxically comes across as terribly thesis-based and illustrative, but it isn’t at all clear what its thesis is or what it actually illustrates. An impressive exercise in unclearly straddling the line between a skilfully made spectacle and a not so skilfully rendered metaphor of a divided country. It’s actually a reiteration of my problem with Garland, a maker of spectacular movies that are dull at their core.
()
Olympic level in the discipline of "inducing a feeling of deep inner turmoil". I haven't seen something so often beautiful, yet repulsive and disturbing in a long time. And my apologies to A24 for wrongly suspecting it of producing a straightforward war blockbuster. It's, of course, another auteur film, just the way we like it.
()
I like Alex Garland's work and even though he makes films that aren't exactly audience friendly, he hasn't stepped on my toes once so far, so I was curious to see how he'd handle a slightly different material, more audience friendly, with a blockbuster format and on a very topical subject, and it's great, though not without its faults. It's a war road movie set in a war-ravaged America with an apocalyptic tinge that has a very slow pace most of the time, but thankfully it works thanks to convincing actors, decent dialogue and an uncomfortable atmosphere. I was a bit bothered that we don't see the birth of the conflict but are thrown somewhere in the middle, and also that the whole film is from a journalists point of view, I would have liked to see what's going on in other parts of America or some behind the scenes from the government on what the president is currently dealing with/planning, but never mind. The highlights are two scenes: the confrontation with Jesse Plemons, which has a very chilling atmosphere and a great build up, and then the finale – I was worried Garland would give us a three-minute shootout but he surprised us. We actually get more than twenty minutes of military action! A massive attack on the White House and it has it all: amazing sound of weapons, perfect cinematography, gripping atmosphere, in short it looks really dense and authentic, a perfect dreamlike action war finale. Of course, the few naturalistic shots are nice, but there could have been more of them. 80%
()
It was clear that Garland wasn’t going to make a blockbuster out of this. However, it wasn’t clear what his masterful balancing between reality and dimensions beyond human perception would bring to a film that is supposed to stand solely on raw realism. Civil War contains grand scenes with tanks and helicopters, but without a cinematographic concept of the kind that Alfonso Cuarón employed in Children of Men and which would be needed here. At its core, Civil War is merely an intimate road movie spanning a broken America as it follows a team of three seasoned journalists and their novice colleague, whose innocence stands in contrast to their experience and professional detachment. Our question of why such a young girl would be doing such work is immediately answered for us: “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life. And I've never felt more alive.” ___ Civil War avoids sentiment and the dark tone of the story is lightened by the use of American pop oldies, but it lacks the artistic optics that we like Garland for in the first place. The film should me made up entirely of terrifying scenes, but it contains only one, which reflects the one-dimensional thinking of America’s redneck population and features a standout performance by Jesse Plemons. The director amplifies the rawness not with dark instrumental music, but with the intense sound of gunfire. And even though the film is compelling and engaging thanks to its characters, it lacks refined and unexpected conflicts, as well as an intellectual reach that would go beyond warning us about Donald Trump. And the climax is literally ridiculous.
()
Ads