As the reviews started pouring out of SXSW, the main take away I got about Civil War was how ‘apolitical’ it was. This was confusing for a number of reasons, seeing how it looked from the trailers like the most hamfisted political message I’d ever seen, and also no art is “apolitical”.

Luckily I was right about one of these things. The movie’s main goal is to take a deep hard look at war journalism and ask if we can get these images in front of people, will it make a difference? So there’s plenty of politics to be found.

We follow Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), a hardened war photojournalist, who firmly believes that in order to do the job you have to remove yourself from the equation. No bias, no tilt. Just get the information and images in front of people and let them decide. We also have her news partner Joel (Wagner Moura), a classic adrenaline junkie who seems to be in it more for the rush and for getting the scoop than for letting people decide. Tagging along we have veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and buddingly eager photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny).

The group is on a mission to get to Washington, DC to get a photo and interview with The President of the United States (Nick Offerman) as he has for 14 months avoided public interviews and has illegally placed himself into a third term. Couple that with executing air strikes on American citizens and I’m starting to think maybe those Western Forces guys aren’t so bad.

But the movie’s not terribly interested in good or bad in the classic sense. Even our intrepid heroes are largely on the hunt for the story for the sake of being the ones who get the story as opposed to any altruistic reasons. While they’re on their way we see plenty of soldiers doing unspeakable things, and most of the time the movie’s going out of the way to not show you what side they are on. They all look the same, they all act the same, the only difference is what flag they salute.

The film opens with a jarring sequence, a protest is happening, decidedly unclear who is protesting or what it’s about. But during the commotion a man carrying an American flag runs into the fray, Lee notices it and manages to hide Jessie behind a car before the suicide bomber takes out a crowd of people. It’s hard for me to see how this is apolitical when it begins with an American flag being a symbol for terror.

Then we have the conversation with the utterly terrifying solider of unknown allegiance played by Jesse Plemons. He starts by asking the group “What kind of Americans are you?” Then goes around and asks where each of them is from. When one of the characters mentions he is from Hong Kong Plemons immediately executes him. It is brutally shocking, not to mention the tensest moment in a movie I’ve seen this year.

So while we never clarify what side is good or bad, there are signals from the movie. Like when Lee says to Sammy “Every time I survived a war zone I thought I was sending a warning home. Don’t do this.” Garland is British by birth, and has spent a lot of his time in The States at this point. So he’s well acquainted with two countries that have had nationalist streaks over the past decade or so. He’s peppered in his concern in here even if he doesn’t say it out loud. After all, one of the main goal points for the crew is Charlottesville, and every time it gets mentioned it’s hard not to think of that day in August of 2017 when racist nationalists took over that town, killing one person and injuring many more.

It’s probably Garland’s bleakest script, and I wouldn’t think of him as famously upbeat. It mostly hearkens back to 28 Days Later, a group of people on an unexpected journey in a world that’s familiar but not right. It’s in the personal moments on their journey that the movie shines for me. Conversations between Lee and Jessie circling around the concept of empathy versus brutal neutrality is at the crux of the moral. It’s an important question for a movie so steeped in journalistic integrity to bring up. Can you ever really be unbiased? And by doing so are you in fact making the story worse? Maybe the key to being a great journalist is a heaping dose of empathy, and to present the side of the story that you see.

The end is a gripping raid on the White House as the Western Forces attempt to take the President down. There’s not a lot of action in the movie prior to this, but when this rocket lights off it is an absolute thrill. Coupled with freeze frames of shots that Lee and Jessie are taking as they bounce back and forth behind cover, it forces you to look at the carnage of warfare.

After everything is said and done the movie doesn’t seem to want to solve the problem for you. I think Garland sides with Lee for the most part, he wants to put it in front of you and see how you react. But like Lee he’s worried that maybe it won’t make a difference.

4.5/5