I guess I’ll be the contrarian… but I refuse to believe this is a hot take. Alex Garland’s Civil War is a movie about nothing, it says nothing, it is nothing. It’s a big swing that is too cowardly to be about what it’s about. It even has nothing to say about what it tries to be about to avoid what it’s dancing around trying not to be about.

The flick stars Kirsten Dunst as a war photographer deep into the new American Civil War. She and her journalist team take a road trip from New York to Washington DC, through unoccupied territory, toward the front lines where the secessionist army battles the US military for reasons never explained.

I love a good What If scenario, an alternate history. Speculative fiction that demands world building to ground its big ideas. This film is not interested in any of that. It never tells us anything about why anyone is fighting… what are the battle lines, the politics, the anything at all?

And, hey, making a movie about Civil War while we have folks talking National Divorces or actually taking up arms seems like a risky move. That’s a marketing minefield you might not want to step into. In which case, DON’T MAKE THIS MOVIE! If you don’t have either the balls to lean into real politics OR the ability to concoct a fictional alternate history, then find a different concept.

This film is too afraid of being political it posits a world where Texas and California team up. It’s basically them saying “See, we’re not political because Texas and California are so diametrically opposed. Please don’t be mad at us.”

Even the choice of main characters – journalists – is a way to avoid taking any kind of stand or having any kind of opinion. They aren’t involved. They are neutral. But when troops are invading important buildings, the movie wants to assure us we aren’t on the side of the soldiers. We’re following the nice, safe journalists. Rest assured, dear viewer, you are safe from politics.

The film is far more interested in being a character study of these journos… but even then it has nothing to say about them. There’s one scene where Dunst ponders the greater meaning of her career as a photographer in foreign wars. But the film ultimately says very little about who these characters are or why they do what they do.

None of which is to say the film is otherwise poorly made. Its production values are very good… though it does suffer from what felt like a limited budget. Most of the movie is a scenic road trip where they occasionally insert some burnt out cars or crashed helicopters. It’s certainly a far cry from the promise of the marketing… the posters for this flick advertise a much different film.

Acting is good though… Kirsten Dunst plays war-torn and cynical just fine. We get an audience surrogate in Cailee Spaeny who plays freaked out and shell-shocked just fine. The rest of the cast do their jobs. They aren’t the problem.

The action and thriller scenes are well shot and crafted… but too many of them are just hand-waving window dressing. Moments to pass through to get to the next time-filling vignette. They are usually pretty small scale, economical moments that don’t really say much… other than “war is bad”.

I wanted to enjoy this film but I wound up a little bored and very cranky once it was clear they didn’t have the courage of their concept. I walked out wondering what it was even about. It’s not about a civil war beyond a surface level… it’s not about war correspondence… it’s barely even a cautionary tale. It’s a lot of well made window dressing.

Score: 68