Civil War (2024) is Safe for Conservatives, because it steers clear of politics almost altogether.

by JP Mac

The new movie “Civil War” has been widely anticipated for months now. It comes in an election year to an America that is heavily divided in real life. It’s written and directed by Alex Garland and stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Cailee Spaeny. It takes place in a dystopian America of the near future. It’s a story about a group of war journalists covering a second American Civil War.

One of the writing/directing choices that Garland makes is to purposefully keep ambiguous the cause of the civil war and the politics of each side. In the movie Texas and California secede and form the “Western Forces” against the remaining United States. (Other states secede as well in the Northwest and Southeast, but apparently don’t join the offensive against the Loyalist forces.) The choice of Texas and California, two states that in real life couldn’t be more different politically or culturally seems to have been a deliberate attempt to keep the political ideology of the Western Forces ambiguous. This was probably a wise move, not just to keep the movie from inflaming real political tensions, but to focus the audience on the story of the journalists. The movie almost goes out of its way to avoid the politics of either side, or even of any of the primary characters. Instead, the audience is to focus on the types of societal and economic destruction a civil war would bring like rioting, looting, and food shortages such a conflict would cause. Neither the Left nor the Right is given anything to sink their fangs into. It’s also a drama about journalists and the part they play in covering any conflict.

The main criticism I have of it is the way it cuts and pastes war crimes and atrocities from different real-world conflicts and superimposes them onto the different warring factions in the film, mainly the Western Forces. It’s as if they found random war crimes from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Vietnam to project onto Americans for the movie. Though this may be fitting in the cases where unaligned individuals or local militias are depicted, the Western Forces and Loyalists are obviously comprised of professional US military units and are shown committing wanton war crimes such as executing enemy prisoners of war. It comes across as an unwarranted attack on our professional military. Without giving anything away, I found the ending implausible. Maybe that’s just the bias of a former member of the US military.

All in all, Civil War is worth watching, but if you’re looking for a partisan fight, this movie will disappoint. It completely avoids politics and ideology thus, it’s safe for conservatives worried the film would be a work of Hollywood propaganda. If you’re looking for a thought provoking, cautionary tale against going down that dark road that leads to a second, hot civil war, it does the job. Current and former members of the US military might take issue with the violations of the laws of land warfare committed by professional soldiers in parts. Mainly, it’s a human drama about how different people react in extraordinary circumstances.

Three and a half out of five stars.

---

To hear my complete movie review on Spotify, click here.

To watch my review on Rumble, click here.