Civil War

Texas' revolt has done Civil War some fine advertising and A24 can celebrate. Alex Garland is keeping his head down with the script and direction. The artistic arrangement is there, but he still focuses on the rawness, underscored by black-and-white photography by up-and-comer Cailee Spaena (the kid from DEVS), and serves up a classic road movie through the disunited states of America. The scariest stop along the way is the one at Jesse Plemons, and it towers over the entire film like the top of the Everest. I understand why Garland doesn't explicitly state the reason for the conflict, though it is implied, but I missed that very conversation whose absence Wagner Moura laments. The excellent Wagner Moura, by the way, easily nudges the brooding Kirsten Dunst. The finale is predictable but formally breathtaking. Great soundtrack. (04/22/2024)

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% (04/20/2024)

A film that offers some impressive moments, but as a whole it mostly skims the surface. It deals with a few key themes, but it is mostly too thesis-like and one-dimensional. A raging America where we get no introduction and a miserable, rushed conclusion. Jesse Plemons steals for himself what is undoubtedly the film's best scene, and the final wartime inferno, while beautifully fluid and robust in sound, lacks technical skill and sophistication. It's not bad, Alex Garland is a capable and distinctive director, but Civil War is perhaps too ambitious a theme that deserved more than a journalistic road-movie with a wartime finale. (05/27/2024)

For Alex Garland, Civil War is a return to the tried-and-tested formula of a group of characters wandering through an "inhuman" landscape in pursuit of a vague goal, but compared to 28 Days Later, Annihilation and Sunshine, the British filmmaker is now dealing with a rather down-to-earth and quite realistic scenario. I've always seen him as a very capable genre filmmaker and I also got what I expected from his latest effort: a solid simple genre film; don't expect anything complicated or deep. The relative straightforwardness actually suits Garland far more than the artsy symbolism of his previous two efforts, which is also not to say that Civil War completely resigns itself to it. If I have one criticism, it's some all-too-obvious visual choices, in a film that, given the premise, would be best served by a straightforward and almost documentary-like approach, the director too often tries to frame the characters in all symmetry in the middle of the frame, as if they were in a Wes Anderson film, and it doesn't quite fit the concept. On the other hand, I appreciate that Garland didn't reach for some low-hanging fruit in the script and somehow politicised the film in a one-sided way at its core, so we get a story that is balanced and, most importantly, not black-and-white. (04/16/2024)

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. (04/17/2024)