Starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny as journalists chronicling a war at home, writer-director Alex Garland’s action film provokes a shudder of recognition.
By Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles TimesThe sharp crack of a snare drum, shuffling along at an insistent martial clip, is what first kicks “Civil War” into gear. The beat is joined by some menacing electronic bloops and nervous muttering, and while you may assume this is the work of some promising young bedroom producer, it’s actually a 1968 track, “Lovefingers,” by the radical duo Silver Apples.
It’s the nowness of “Civil War” that will be much discussed. The movie takes place in an America that’s been amplified from its current state of near-insurrection, but only slightly, a distance that feels troublingly small. An autocratic third-term president practices a pompous speech in front of a teleprompter. California and Texas have seceded, becoming unlikely allies in a campaign to retake the capital.
Accordingly, Garland makes his heroes a pair of photojournalists, one hard-nosed, the other, a budding junkie. As played by an unusually grave and commanding Kirsten Dunst, Lee knows from many a rubble-strewn hot spot and seems long past the irony of discovering one at home. Jessie only wants some action. If colleges still existed, she’d be graduating from one. Instead, she hopes to sneak into the school of Lee’s fearlessness.
For some, those glasses will be bait enough, a MAGA hat to coastal bulls. But for the most part, what Garland is after is less accusatory and more provocative, detached from the kind of red-state-blue-state binary that would trap “Civil War” in amber before it had a chance to breathe. Do we deserve a democracy if we can barely speak to each other? This is a film set in a future when words no longer matter. Even the final words of power-grabbing leaders disappoint.
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