A movie review. Civil War is a 2024 American film by Alex Garland. I have wanted to watch it for quite some time, and we finally did last weekend. The story goes like this: the main character is a middle aged woman called Lee who is a photographer for the New York Times (I think). She and her two male colleagues Joel and Sammy who are both journalists decide to travel from New York to Washington D.C. through war-torn country to interview the president. A young girl called Jessie worms her way into the group because Joel likely fancies her. Jessie is very ambitious and sees Lee as her role model while Lee initially is pretty much irritated by the fact that she joins them.
The movie is called Civil War but there is little explanation about what's happening. The characters don't talk much between themselves and the half of their dialogues consists of f-words, literally. Still, we learn that the president decided to stay for the third term which evidently caused a rebellion, that he used airstrikes against American citizens and that his dwindling army is currently engaged in a 2 front fighting against the joint Texas-California forces and Florida alliance.
Though the president is presumably a bastard, the rebels aren't shown in a very positive light, either. In fact, Sammy who is older and wiser, predicts that once they take D.C. they'll turn upon each other. He and his colleagues have to travel a long distance to the front lines and the biggest part of their journey presumably goes through the territories controlled by the rebels and yet everywhere they go they encounter totally anarchy, chaos, wanton destruction and bloodshed, with a couple of exceptions.
After we finished watching it, we wondered what was the meaning of this movie and even went to read the Wiki article. I guess, it's the type of movie where different people will have different ideas what it was all about. The way I see it, the main theme is that the types who work for the press are all cynical and jaded, largely devoid of morals and resemble vultures in the way they operate as they are only interested in sensationalism and will literally step on corpses to achieve their goals.
The film shows the transformation of Jessie into exactly such a person. In the beginning she is just stupid and manipulative, but by the last frames the transformation is complete. Of course, that's just my opinion and some (wanna-be) career gal may very well feel inspired by her character which I frankly found quite irritating, especially when you consider that she was directly and indirectly responsible for several deaths.
The movie is an action thriller, quite fast-paced and short enough so that you won't get bored. It has graphic violence and profanity, but no s8xual content of any kind. Strangely enough, there are virtually no female warriors until the very last minutes when the group of rebel soldiers who storm the White House features a black female sergeant (so I guess a double quota was filled). For a modern film, it is quite decent.
I would recommend it if you are into dystopian genre and don't mind gratuitous violence. My husband thought that the film had strong Mad Max vibes.
Is it America's near future? I'd like to think, no, it isn't, but we do live in uncertain times. It may be the future of us all, who knows?
It was a poorly done movie, and no. I don't think this is America's future. I think there will be a long, slow, miserable decline that won't actually demand a civil war to accomplish since it has already begun.
ReplyDeleteMost modern movies seem to be like this somehow. I hope there won't be either war or decline in your country's future (or in Europe for that matter), but if a civil war should ever start I'd imagine it be exactly like this: with lots of cruelty and needless bloodshed on both sides.
ReplyDeleteI could see the USA breaking up into smaller countries in the future. I certainly have nothing in common with a nose ring wearing tattooed purple haired freak from the West or East coast and would perfectly happy if one of their dumb-versity pets took them out to a new promised land if you know what I mean. While California is beautiful, if most of it sunk into the Pacific from an earthquake I would not care. Or Washington and Oregon for that matter. Or Minnesota, Massachusetts and other such leftist scum.
ReplyDeleteWhile not violent, there are a number of secessionist movements in the US to some degree. Eastern Washington state would like to become part of Idaho. A TEXIT proposition is trying to get ballot status with at least presenting the idea. Parts of Illinois would like to be free of Chicago (Chicongo?). Some may have heard of the idea of the state of Jefferson in northern California and southern Oregon. By the way, West Virginia was an illegal creation of the tyrant Lincoln.
Those who claim there is no legal basis for succession did not know the founders. New England threatened secession after Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase in the early 1800s.
Oh there could be a legal basis but laws are often disregarded by the powers that be when convenient;)
ReplyDeleteA good recent article about the idea of redrawing state borders in the US.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/02/ryan-mcmaken/secession-why-redrawing-us-state-borders-makes-politicians-so-mad/
Interesting, thanks for the link.
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