Civil War: Movie Review

Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Caillee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons

Director: Alex Garland

Less a polemic and more an incendiary cautionary message-led film, Alex Garland's Civil War is an assault on the senses - even if its story cliches can be seen coming a mile off.

Against a backdrop of a dystopian future America, ripped asunder by civil war, Dunst plays embittered war photographer Lee, who, along with her colleague (Moura), is determined to get to Washington D.C. with a single mission of talking to the President (Offerman, channeling obvious topical tyrants).

But there's danger along the way, from marauding military factions, to civilians taking the law into their own hands - and coupled with the fact journalists are shot on sight in DC and Lee's been landed with a young would-be photographer (Elvis' Spaeny) charge, their journey is more than just a potential suicide mission.

While throwaway lines build some context to what has been happening, and serve as chunks of exposition, Garland is less interested in hand-holding or deepening any mythology about the cessationists and more keen to focus on the visual horrors that unfold.

From men hanging from makeshift gallows in car washes, to bodies littering the ground at American institutions such as a Winter Wonderland, Civil War is essentially a travelogue masquerading as a live photo exhibition that offers horrific insight into the brutality humans can inflict on each other.

While the storyline of Lee and her unwanted protege is somewhat of a cliche, and has a trajectory you can see coming a mile off, the interaction between the group of photo journalists - the younger, the weary and the old (Henderson) - feels real, lived in and offers a dynamic that yields much reward. And a cameo by Jesse Plemons is brutally tense and shocking.

But it's in the viscera that Civil War soars.

A white-knuckle ride throughout, that offers sickening tension and knots to the stomach, Garland's view of the world is terrifying. Bombs, explosions, bullets, planes overhead and in-street fighting gives the film a raw brutality that's hard to shake - equally the needledrops throughout proffer horrifying juxtapositions of what's transpiring.

The filmmakers are not afraid to use silence to maximum effect as well - it really is a film where the soundscape and the less-is-more approach achieves more than overplaying a hand with a trite message ever could.

Best experienced with no knowledge, Civil War is a film that rises above some of its flaws. It will stay with you long after, and while its story is somewhat formulaic, it's no less compelling and galvanising than it should be.