Civil War (2024)

Watched 4/12/24 (theater)

To me this didn’t seem like a film that gives much of a shit about research or its characters or realistic character development, but damn if it wasn’t effective. Effective. Not necessarily terribly smart, but effective. I don’t think this movie has anything much to say other than, “be careful” and I don’t think the screenplay craft is there enough to justify a thematic deep dive, but I would be lying if I said the direction of this wasn’t extremely transportive. Immersive, frightening, shocking—especially in Dolby, sheesh, those gunshots.

I really don’t think this movie’s all that intelligent and I kind of reject both the discourse of this movie being a masterpiece and that of it being a mess. I think it’s just a feat of pretty astonishing directing. There are some really clunky logistical anatomies of various scenes including some anticlimactic shootout action in the first building breach sequence, a magically silent killer SUV in a pivotal standoff sequence, and a few off-kilter, unceremonious character deaths that have both some suspect physics and angles at play.

But Garland’s ability to mix the road movie formula with tense, jarring sequences of action horror blended a lot better than one might think. With him coming from everything from novels to screenplays to directing movies about robots, aliens, and, well, men, I was often reminded most of his alleged ghost directing on Dredd. Full-tilt violence dialed up to 11 with an innocent rookie character to serve as the audience avatar following around near-certain death.

And on the point of characters, I really don’t think I found much here to talk about with them besides some somewhat unbelievable choices toward the end. For me it was more just appreciating the cast. I thought they had very little on the page and all made more than the most of it. McKinley-Henderson’s voice as the gravelly foil to the high-speed amusement-park moments. Moura as the fiery charisma engine that brings both the most and least humane moments to the story. Dunst giving a really cool, wholly subtle turn as the wounded, infamous professional. And Spaeny as the bug-eyed vessel of naivety who we see equally shaken and aroused. I have stated and will state again in this review that Garland tacked on a few character beats that didn’t totally gel for me, but the cast was never not appreciated. Great work across the board.

The scale of this movie is just so interesting to me. You can see the creativity so much more in the set pieces because of the budget. You don’t see other blockbusters on this scale with the same visual sensibilities and aesthetic and for me it really worked. Heard an interview with Garland where he discussed how this was originally conceived for television and boy am I glad that idea wasn’t fulfilled. Would have robbed this of all its third-act heft, although it may have left more room for character. But then again, has Garland ever even been that interested in character? No, I don’t think so. It’s always been more about ideas for him (which I honestly find more interesting, too, most of the time) so once again, I am glad this wasn’t turned into some terrible looking Hulu show. He somehow managed to pull off Devs as one of the better-looking streamers of the last five years or so but man that was on so much of a less ambitious scale.

The set pieces in this…just arresting both visually and in their almost perverse sound design. The office shootout was the most startling. The sniper scene was the most fun. The Plemons scene was the most disturbing. The third-act raid on the capital was the reason to see the movie. 

I do subscribe to the theory that it’s pretty tough to make an anti-war film. As much as Garland may posit this as such, the sheer ambition and kinetic execution of the battle sequences and especially the music cues that come in between lead me to believe otherwise. Garland knows that what he is doing is making some really kick-ass movie moments. It may be a little sick and we may be a little sick for getting a kick out of them, but I just call bullshit on anyone calling this an anti-war movie. Sure it may channel some of Garland’s anxieties and sure some of it is extremely dark and uncommercial, but there’s a showmanship that exists behind the camera and in the general design choices that does not allow this to be anti-war at all. Not a complaint—I found this movie to be super upsetting and thrilling in equal measure. I just don’t buy anyone who says this is some kind of anti-war masterpiece. Nor is Apocalypse Now in my eyes. To me Garland’s latest will be remembered for really memorable, bravado filmmaking at the intersection of budget and blockbuster with a few interesting, if not fully explored, ideas. Had a really good time at the and will be curious to see how it holds up at home.

Alex Garland is such an interesting figure in the current Hollywood sphere. A man whose ideas are too big for indies but too uncommercial for out-and-out big studio blockbusters. This mid-budget A24 zone seems the perfect happy medium, and moving next to Warfare should be an interesting evolution, but I do worry that when he goes back to screenwriting we will lose a few of the elements that make him special. To me 3/4 of his writer/director combo efforts far exceed the movies other directors have made with his sold scripts. While Sunshine and 28 Days Later have their moments, they’re undercut by Garland not being able to continue thinking after putting fingers to keyboard. It seems like he learns a lot every time he adapts one of his own screenplay and makes some of it up as he goes along with his brilliantly erudite, pretentious, one-of-a-kind brain. He goes down rabbit holes that I just don’t think other directors can even conceive of and I really don’t think it’s all there on the page for them so the movie ends up lacking a thing or two that it wouldn’t if Garland were in the director’s chair. I’m all for the co-directing in Warfare as I have a feeling Garland’s personality will take over and the first-time-director directing partner will only have so much say. So it’s great that we’re getting one more. I just hope that when he takes his directing break that it’s short lived. I think there’s a chance that now that his directing genie is out of the bottle, he isn’t going to love seeing someone else direct one of his scripts when the final product is screened (especially if it’s a studio cut like it will be with 28 Years)—he’ll go back to full control just as quickly as he left it.

Garland has really become something different then I thought he was. There’s a vexing, very elastic gap between his movies, especially Machina vs Civil War if you want to look at first vs last. He has stripped his screenplays down as he has gained budget and directing flair, most recently trading in almost all of the existential and analytical themes and maintaining just the clinical outlook as he upgrades his filmmaking technique. That’s about all that has survived from film one to four and it’s fascinating. As the toybox he’s been given has expanded, you can see him both learning and almost regressing in his screenplays at the same time. There’s still a good British wit and dryly comedic sense that pokes through in Civil War, though—but I guess that’s just a commonality in films one and four, notably absent from Annihilation and Men almost entirely. Garland’s one of the few director’s working whom I can’t put in a box, and I appreciate that. One of the last true voices of original science fiction ideas, I guess, if I had to put him in one. And that’s something to celebrate for me, especially when you get to go see his movies in a kick-ass theater that the movie was fine-tuned for to the max. Much appreciated.

9/10