"Civil War" Review: A Brutal Display of Wasted Potential

Alex Garland's latest flick is a technical marvel let down by his signature weak writing.

April 19, 2024

In 2003, photographer Kenneth Adelman photographed Malibu, California, to document coastal erosion. One photo captured a residential property that belonged to Barbra Streisand.

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Streisand sued Adelman and Pictopia.com for $50 million, the frivolity of which cannot be overstated, not only due to the wealth of the showbiz legend but because it's ludicrous to put a mansion on the side of a cliff and expect it not to get photographed. In a rare deliverance of justice, the star lost in the courts. Streisand had to pay Adelman’s legal fees, which amounted to $177,000.

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However, the most noteworthy aspect of the case is the ironic hilarity born from Streisand’s attempt to suppress the photograph.

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Before the lawsuit, the photo had been downloaded only six times, twice by Streisand’s legal team. After the case went public, Pictopia.com was accessed by 420,000 unique visitors in one month.

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In trying to avoid it, Streisand inadvertently brought more attention to her home. This paradox is known today as the “Streisand Effect.”

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In Alex Garland’s latest letdown, Civil War, that phenomenon gets reborn. In a modern-day but dystopian America, the nation is at war. The film never makes the specifics of this conflict clear, particularly with the geographical alliances. Texas and California, which neither could or would align in even the most backward alternate universe, comprise the “Western Forces,” which is odd, considering that no one has ever or would ever consider Texas the West. The number of factions and their specific aims are never elaborated upon but routinely mentioned.

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It’s a concerted effort by Garland to avoid speculation about the why and how of America’s second civil war, but ultimately has the opposite effect: by introducing something so blatantly nonsensical, both geographically and ideologically impossible, while attempting to retain the necessary realism to make his “points” feel prescient, he creates something that renders that aim impossible.

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Despite Kirsten Dunst's magnetism in the lead role of a war photographer worn down by decades of human barbarity, the arresting displays of violence, and the enrapturing sound work, the nonsense underlying the film’s premise renders the topical realities irrelevant. Garland would’ve been better off mentioning them in the vaguest possible terms and allowing the blatant parallels between his America and his audience’s do the heavy lifting.

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It’s an unfortunate and (for Garland) inconvenient truth because sapping the reality of war from America’s tedious political discourse and relaying how de-politicized conflict becomes on the ground is worth pursuing. It’s what makes its scenes of conflict so paralyzing. One would figure that, following the self-aggrandizing theatricality of his previous feature, Men, Garland would opt for self-indulgent imagery that does more to create the impression of substance than actually deliver it.

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Instead, there’s something refreshingly (for Garland, at least) unapologetic about how directly it deals with conflict. It frames its “action” as a reality of circumstance, albeit circumstance that Garland layers with understated intensity. He manages to make the warfare matter-of-fact but involving in a way that’s polarizing instead of needlessly gory, inspiring a sobering acceptance instead of pointless outrage.

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Eventually, we must recognize that conflict can dissolve the original intent and become a bloody trudge through a horrifying reality. In the words of Ashley Wilkes, “Most of the miseries of the world were caused by war. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about.”

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It’s true. In the Internet era, the propagated cause of conflicts is inescapable; if one forgets, the information age will be happy to slap you across the face with it as every device hammers home the narratives even decades after the fact. But for so long, we heard them once, latched onto them as fact, and, by the time it was over, completely lost sight of whatever “righteous” cause began our battle.

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Vietnam was a glorious fight to cease the spread of Communism; Afghanistan was a stand against extremist nations with weapons of mass destruction; and how many ordinary citizens could even tell you now why we entered the Persian Gulf? If they can, something is simmering beneath the surface, a recognition that even if we believed in it once, there are few more effective remedies for belief than bloodshed.

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Of course, there will always be extremists of all kinds in all nations, and millions of so-called “patriots” will gladly take up the mantle of any notion their American government feeds them. Still, all war reaches a point of apathy; the public wants it to stop, unable to rouse the necessary emotion to champion that cause after years, maybe even decades, of conflict. It’s easy to forget, to lose sight, and have reality take over.

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It’s a worthy aim, and when Garland commits, we certainly are held firm in his visual vice grip, but the extent to which we feel it is somewhat null and void because the premise's potential goes unfulfilled. If ever there was a movie that didn’t need to restrain itself, it’s this one. Under the Obama administration, foolish pseudo-liberals believed electing a Black man to the Presidency solved racism, and bigots got bullied into silence. With the ascension of Donald Trump, what many knew to be true became inescapable to all; no one was cured, and nothing was resolved. We’d merely placed a Band-Aid over a bullet wound and allowed it to fester. Today's ongoing reckoning was inevitable.

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But even for those who knew that, the extent of people’s lunacy has still rendered shock. We were frozen in horror by the events of January 6 and continue to get lashed across the principles by the obliviousness of Trump's insurrectionist cult. After all that, nothing can surprise us now unless you’re performatively aghast by something after nine years.

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Garland didn’t need to hold back; he could’ve gone for the jugular every second and not had us feeling like spacing the violence out would've been more impactful. After all, what story we receive, what moments, even when the conflict is more subdued, we witness, offers little. Dunst shoulders the load, but no actor could give Garland’s writing genuine depth, and his heavy-handedness (particularly during the sniper scene) is what the movie is between the battle scenes: soulless, aimless, and meandering.

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“Cinephiles" love Garland for making Ex Machina, one of the many overrated flicks lauded by the Film Bro Bible. They’ll invariably defend his approach to Civil War and chastise criticism with the rhetoric used to defend Christopher Nolan before Oppenheimer. Critics don't “get it,” and the most abstract concepts, which definitively invite projection, will thus get projected onto so their sensibilities can feel adequately defended.

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Unfortunately, perception is not necessarily reality. Reality is reality. The reality of Civil War is that it’s a movie with some incredible sound work and visual displays, all of which create a tense atmosphere and inspire reflection, respectively, that gets weighed down by an outside narrative that, while acted fantastically, forces focus on the improbability of the narrative, distracts us from what could’ve been an immersive political flick, and muddies the waters too much for Garland’s aims to hit their target.