Civil War review: Kirsten Dunst has never been better than in Alex Garland’s action stormer

Alex Garland has argued that his latest film began as an attempt to address the “nature of reporting without bias”. That conversation certainly takes place here. Kirsten Dunst, never better, plays a photographer with an unstoppable urge to put herself in harm’s way. There are many opportunities to interrogate the notion of the journalist as gin-addled crusader.

That discussion is unfolding before a massive distraction, however, as if Marshall amps were blaring out next week’s lottery numbers or the reconstituted Beatles were playing on the neighbouring field. Civil War has, already, generated much thundering debate about how its imagined conflict relates to the political ferment playing out in the United States. One could fairly argue that, with references to a recent “Antifa massacre”, Garland is dabbling in creative ambiguity. A massacre of anti-fascist forces or by anti-fascist forces? That question is never answered, but the former does feel more likely.

Garland employs all the techniques of the Vietnam movie as he ramps up his end-of-times bedlam

Nick Offerman (who turned up recently as a Maga plumber in Ava DuVernay’s Origin) plays a third-term president who, after disbanding the FBI, finds himself fighting a civil war on more than one front. Further tricksiness manifests itself with a significant successionist force comprising an unlikely alliance between Texas and California, states that currently lean in different political directions. But let’s not kid ourselves. You would have to work hard to read this president as anything other than a spectre from the right.

Anyway, rather than dealing in hard political allegories, Garland encases his drama in a multifaceted, only partially explained chaos. One is more often reminded of heroic-journalism films such as Salvador or Under Fire than of an imagined future America in Soylent Green or Escape from New York. There is a sense that the film is bringing some tropes home to the US. One is reminded of a tense sequence in The Killing Fields when, as here, the journalists are forced to plead pathetically for their lives before a fanatical guerrilla. The Khmer Rouge are now rural rednecks with a suspicion of darker-skinned urbanites.

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There is something a little like commentary in those sequences. But, for the most part, the future history is there largely to facilitate a thrilling road movie packed with martial action. We begin with four markedly contrasting journos coming together for a journey to Washington, DC, where they hope to corner the president. Dunst plays Lee, a battle-weary Reuters op whose surname nods to the legendary Lee Miller. Stephen McKinley Henderson is Sammy, an ageing relic from “what’s left of the New York Times”. Wagner Moura as the slick Joel gets to work through all the Hunter S Thompson moves: booze, dope, fast cars, laddish joshing. Looking even younger than her years, Cailee Spaeny is well cast as Jessie, a fan of Lee who hopes to pick up tips on the way to the capital.

A massacre of anti-fascist forces, or by anti-fascist forces? That question is never answered, but the former does feel more likely

Setting his heroes on an odyssey into a new heart of darkness – January 6th vibes inevitably attend their eventual arrival on Pennsylvania Avenue – Garland, who turned to directing with Ex Machina close to a decade ago, employs all the techniques of the Vietnam movie as he ramps up his end-of-times bedlam. Helicopters group like bad angels. Rob Hardy’s camera flits behind cover as it dodges bullets with the harried characters. The quirky soundtrack pounds its way to a closing number that could hardly be more appropriate.

For all the atrocities on display, dissenters can reasonably argue that there is less sociopolitical analysis here than in the average zombie film (a lot less than in a George A Romero flick). But the momentum is so relentless that, when you’re actually watching the thing, it proves hard to care. Civil War is wan as satire. But it’s an action stormer for the ages.

Civil War opens on Friday, April 12th, with previews from Tuesday, April 9th