Civil War Review: It Can Happen Here

Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic

I don’t often go into a movie with real-world apprehension. Still, I had a pit in my stomach sitting down for Alex Garland’s latest film, Civil War, a dystopian film about a second American civil war. Most of that apprehension was attributable to the escalating rhetoric of civil war talk in American politics in the last decade. 

Set in the near future, Civil War follows intrepid journalists documenting the final days of a civil war between the United States and the secessionist forces led by California and Texas, known as the Western Forces. Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) is a veteran war photographer traveling with her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) and hoping to get to Washington D.C. before the Western Forces arrive. They cross paths with aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and another veteran journalist, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), in New York City and agree to let them ride along with them as far as Charlottesville.

Given the political climate in America today, it would be easy to make a film that is a political statement, but Civil War is shockingly apolitical, though some breadcrumbs give hints. The President, portrayed by Nick Offerman, is in his third term in office and has disbanded the FBI. There was also an Antifa massacre in the past that Dunst’s Lee Smith documented, which led to her gaining acclaim as a photojournalist. 

Initially, when I first saw the trailer, I laughed at California and Texas being on the same side of a hypothetical civil war, given their very different political landscapes, but that is a choice that contributes to keeping things apolitical and also speaks to the despotic nature of Offerman’s POTUS, who only has a few short but effective scenes and is occasionally heard in broadcasts trying to spread propaganda of winning a war that does not match what is happening on the ground.

And what is happening on the ground is disquieting. Basically, anything you can and would see in a war-torn region of the world is imprinted onto this future, dystopian United States. A stop at a gas station offers a glimpse of what it costs to buy gas and the probable devaluing of the American dollar, with the station being guarded by three locals holding firearms and a subtle visual warning in the background of the movie’s frame of what happens to people who try to steal.

Several scenes make the film feel all too real. Seeing the United Nations peacekeeping forces on the ground and running a humanitarian shelter was sobering. The true standout scene, though, is when Lee, Joel, Jessie, Sammy, and a few other journalists cross paths with Jesse Plemons (in an uncredited role) and a few other men who are very clearly committing war crimes, which immediately puts the journos at odds with them. It is every bit as unnerving as anything you can expect to see in any other film in 2024.

The film features a strong cast with diverse characters with different backgrounds. Cailee Spaeny is quickly becoming the hot new thing in Hollywood, and she gives a great performance as the fresh-faced member of the group who is ambitious and still idealistic, which stands in stark contrast to Kirsten Dunst’s Lee. Lee is cynical and world-weary. She serves to help toughen up Spaeny’s Jessie, and Jessie, in turn, leavens her character’s jadedness. While I liked all the main performances, Dunst’s is the one that stands out most. 

One weak point of the film is Lee and Joel’s plan to travel to D.C. to interview the President when he seems to be on the brink of being deposed. The likelihood of their success in getting there in one piece and achieving their goal of getting to him before the opposition forces does seem akin to a reporter trying to reach Hitler in his bunker during his final days. Unless they view it as a suicide mission, it seems highly unlikely and more preposterous than aspirational. 

Garland’s film is, at the very least, a cautionary tale, and in more ways than one. The political rhetoric in the United States has rapidly deteriorated in the past few years, and there is a shocking and disturbing number of people who have openly said that America needs another civil war or a “national divorce.” This notion, of course, is absurd, as there is no way to split this country apart cleanly without significant bloodshed. 

Garland lays out for the audience a glimpse of how a potential national divorce could play out, and it is sobering. The American Civil War clearly defined lines of demarcation between the two sides: Union vs. Confederates and North vs. South.

The lines are a lot murkier now than they were 160+ years ago. 

I also think the film is a cautionary tale about the state of journalism today and why it matters for journalism to be engaged and even passionate sometimes. I’m not calling for activist journalism, but merely observing and reporting in the face of malign actors spreading disinformation and propaganda increasingly feels like a losing battle. 

Lee and Joel remain shockingly detached from what they document of their own country being ripped apart. Sometimes, this is a survival tactic to defuse a situation, like when Lee, to save a shaken Jessie, asks if she can get an armed man’s picture next to two men he and others have beaten and strung up by their arms. Just as often, though, it is a coping mechanism for constantly being near trauma, like barely escaping a suicide bomber at the last second or seeing a soldier they are embedded with die right before their eyes.

At one point, Lee opines that when she was photographing wars in other countries, she thought she was sending a warning to everyone back home. Initially, I placed the blame on an unhearing audience, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if she was not making her warning loud enough. And did her creeping detachment come through in her photographs and mute her message? Does detachment start to act as a substitute for objectivity in Lee and Joel’s reporting? 

Maybe people back home needed to hear from the parts of Lee and Joel that they had to deaden in themselves to document what they saw. Parts of themselves that they do their best to keep dormant, but eventually come out, either from taking Jessie under their wing or because of events they experience on the road to D.C.

Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel about dystopian American politics in 1935 titled It Can’t Happen Here, a phrase that came to my mind watching this movie. Civil War is not an allegory about present-day concerns but a shouting from the rooftops about them. Civil war has happened here before and can happen again, and it is not something that people should not be cavalier about. I’m probably as jaded as Lee is about whether Garland’s warning will be heeded.

Civil War is a well-made film about a sobering glimpse into a possible future for the United States based on the state of the nation today. It’s also a film I’m not sure I could sit through for a second viewing as it is a future outcome that, however remote, is not one I can dismiss out of hand completely.

That scares the hell out of me.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars