Civil War (2024)
Rating – 4/4
**SPOILERS**
War is hell!
There’s no sugarcoating it. War is hell! Just listen to any veteran, refugee, or look at historical photos, and it’s all true. And there’s more than life lost. And it’s told to us in one of the best movies of 2024.
In the not-too-distant future, America has broken out into a civil war thanks to a president-turned-dictator (Nick Offerman) and a fascist government, opposed by a variety of factions, from Florida to California. As for a group of journalists led by Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), it’s the perfect opportunity to try and score an interview with the President and get his story. It’s a journey into the hellscape that was the United States. For Lee, she’s experienced and hardened from her time in other warzones in the Third World.
But this is America. Or was.
Joining the team is Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young photographer eager for adventure. She’s curious and naïve, but reality sinks in Jessie represents a loss of innocence, starting off small and meek and gradually becoming desensitized to the horror, calmly taking pictures of the surrounding chaos, even as her colleagues die beside her. Gradually, she becomes another casualty of the war and forever changed. Just imagine what real people have to deal with.
And there is no allegory here, even though it could be easy, given the state of the world when this came out. It’s not Liberals versus Conservatives, nor is it the Nazis, or Al Qaeda, or Antifa, or MAGA. it’s just war. It’s ugly, intense, hectic, deadly, and affects everyone. There is no bias, no matter what political beliefs someone holds because death comes for us all. And it can happen here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
There’s nothing much about the various factions or the current government. No one is portrayed as being more right or wrong, they just believe that their way is the way forward and no one can agree. You’ve seen it in many other countries throughout history and now America has joined that list.
The lessons are: democracy and freedom are fragile and are not to be taken for granted.
It doesn’t matter which side you’re on; it’s still going to hit home one way or another. Friends and family die, homes and businesses are devasted, and nothing will ever be the same. And where do you go from here? Can you rebuild a shattered nation that has been the world’s police for years? All questions that make you think.
But the one signature scene is when the group is held hostage by a group of nationalists and one (Jesse Plemons) asks, “what kind of American are you?” Are they racist Nazis, anti-government militia men, or just cold-blooded killers? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the group doesn’t know how to recognize people as people anymore and shows how divided the nation has become. What does it mean to be an American now and who fits? Who is America for? Whites? People of color? Gays? Men? Women? Who knows? The lines are drawn even further apart now.
And that’s war. It’s divisive and deadly and can (and has) happened here in America. It’s a film that makes you think and subverts your expectations. But we can all expect war to be brutal and traumatic. That’s something that will never change. People don’t appreciate freedoms given to others and will always try to take it away, no matter who or what you stand for.
It begs the question: even if we’re the most powerful nation on the planet, are we any better than the other countries?
