Review of Civil War (2024)
Taken from my personal Letterboxd account
Easily one of the worst films I've seen in a long time. I genuinely struggle to understand what the hype is with this film because it felt so generic, so bland, and so surface-level.
This film had so much potential! I really went into this with high expectations considering I'm fascinated by conflict journalism. The premise is so interesting and there was so much to explore: the idea of journalists as the fourth estate, the ethical challenges of conflict photography, the cost of reporting truth during times of war. But there was barely any exploration of any new or interesting ideas in any significant depth and it just felt so hollow. It has the same level of depth as a YA dystopian fiction novel. The more I think about it, the more it seems plausible that Garland got stoned and had the grand idea that it would be sick to make a film about hunting down the US president.
I get why the context of the war is left vague but I don't think it really works here. If the primary focus was the ethics of conflict journalism it would have been fine, but it seems primarily driven by the plot of confronting the president. As a result, it's very hard to understand what they're even doing and why. There's very little reference to the importance that their journalism has on the conflict or the general public, so it just seems like these journalists have manufactured the duty that their work has. It almost seems to border on glorifying the aesthetic of violence which is a shame! And if that was actually the point all along a la Nightcrawler, it didn't nearly explore this in enough depth for it to be thought-provoking. The constant cultural references like the ‘Antifa massacre’ and the ‘Portland Maoists’ also felt so cheap, provocative, and most of all confusing within the apolitical landscape of the film.
The biggest letdowns of this film were the characters and the writing. The dialogue felt almost straight out of a Red Dead Redemption cutscene, extremely predictable, artificial and stale. Combined with the scene set-up and the editing, it genuinely felt like watching a playthrough of a video game. The characters were so shallow and cliche that it was borderline angering. We have all the defaults here! The wise old guy who holds the gang together yet ironically dies saving them, the naive annoying youngster who's overly hopeful, and the nihilistic self-hating seasoned professional! And of course, we witness as the amateur becomes everything that the professional hated about herself! I feel like I’ve seen this one before… I struggled to feel any kind of connection to them because of how flat their personalities were, and frankly how annoying they were. Way too many cringe lines and artificial conversations. So many unnecessary scenes too, like the one in the store where Lee tries on clothing and Joel gets mad at the retail worker who's apathetic about the war. Like what was the point of this? And so many scenes and storylines with major promise that just fell flat such as how Jesse Plemons' character was interesting and could have heavily contributed to our understanding of the wider conflict until it was revealed that his main motivation was a personal one of simply being a massive racist.
The ending was way too long and I think 15 minutes could have easily been shaved off the duration. I got so incredibly bored during the action scenes because they were so unengaging, CGI overload! There were a few effective scenes like Jessie falling into the pit of bodies but the overwhelming majority of the film was made up of pretty mediocre action scenes that didn’t do anything for me. I thought Men had a lot of very emotionally effective scenes that got under my skin and left me with lot to think about, so I’m not sure why Civil War, a film that should have had a similar effect, left me feeling so unaffected and uninspired. Such a major shame.
This took me a week to write because I wanted to reflect on it; I thought perhaps if I gave it enough time to think about and discuss with others I would actually find myself fond of it or discovering some meaning I hadn't previously considered. But no, I'm just further irritated by the £11 I spent on the ticket and the 2 hours I wasted which could have been spent doing basically anything else. A source has told me that Garland is allegedly currently directing a new film that's practically the same as Civil War and to that I say SHAME.
This film had so much potential! I really went into this with high expectations considering I'm fascinated by conflict journalism. The premise is so interesting and there was so much to explore: the idea of journalists as the fourth estate, the ethical challenges of conflict photography, the cost of reporting truth during times of war. But there was barely any exploration of any new or interesting ideas in any significant depth and it just felt so hollow. It has the same level of depth as a YA dystopian fiction novel. The more I think about it, the more it seems plausible that Garland got stoned and had the grand idea that it would be sick to make a film about hunting down the US president.
I get why the context of the war is left vague but I don't think it really works here. If the primary focus was the ethics of conflict journalism it would have been fine, but it seems primarily driven by the plot of confronting the president. As a result, it's very hard to understand what they're even doing and why. There's very little reference to the importance that their journalism has on the conflict or the general public, so it just seems like these journalists have manufactured the duty that their work has. It almost seems to border on glorifying the aesthetic of violence which is a shame! And if that was actually the point all along a la Nightcrawler, it didn't nearly explore this in enough depth for it to be thought-provoking. The constant cultural references like the ‘Antifa massacre’ and the ‘Portland Maoists’ also felt so cheap, provocative, and most of all confusing within the apolitical landscape of the film.
The biggest letdowns of this film were the characters and the writing. The dialogue felt almost straight out of a Red Dead Redemption cutscene, extremely predictable, artificial and stale. Combined with the scene set-up and the editing, it genuinely felt like watching a playthrough of a video game. The characters were so shallow and cliche that it was borderline angering. We have all the defaults here! The wise old guy who holds the gang together yet ironically dies saving them, the naive annoying youngster who's overly hopeful, and the nihilistic self-hating seasoned professional! And of course, we witness as the amateur becomes everything that the professional hated about herself! I feel like I’ve seen this one before… I struggled to feel any kind of connection to them because of how flat their personalities were, and frankly how annoying they were. Way too many cringe lines and artificial conversations. So many unnecessary scenes too, like the one in the store where Lee tries on clothing and Joel gets mad at the retail worker who's apathetic about the war. Like what was the point of this? And so many scenes and storylines with major promise that just fell flat such as how Jesse Plemons' character was interesting and could have heavily contributed to our understanding of the wider conflict until it was revealed that his main motivation was a personal one of simply being a massive racist.
The ending was way too long and I think 15 minutes could have easily been shaved off the duration. I got so incredibly bored during the action scenes because they were so unengaging, CGI overload! There were a few effective scenes like Jessie falling into the pit of bodies but the overwhelming majority of the film was made up of pretty mediocre action scenes that didn’t do anything for me. I thought Men had a lot of very emotionally effective scenes that got under my skin and left me with lot to think about, so I’m not sure why Civil War, a film that should have had a similar effect, left me feeling so unaffected and uninspired. Such a major shame.
This took me a week to write because I wanted to reflect on it; I thought perhaps if I gave it enough time to think about and discuss with others I would actually find myself fond of it or discovering some meaning I hadn't previously considered. But no, I'm just further irritated by the £11 I spent on the ticket and the 2 hours I wasted which could have been spent doing basically anything else. A source has told me that Garland is allegedly currently directing a new film that's practically the same as Civil War and to that I say SHAME.