I’m gonna spoil the movie, so if you care, it’s probably best if you stop reading here because I’m not putting the entire thing in spoiler tags
So, long story short, Civil War is a beautifully made film that’s also cowardly and disappointing
The cinematography is great, the sound is excellent, but the movie lacks something very important, an actual message
If the movie is supposed to be about truth and journalism and its importance, that never comes through, instead it feels very much like “The Troops are Brave: Camera Edition”
Because at no point in the film does the actual work journalists do comes up, instead you’re treated to scene after scene of our protagonists taking pictures of war and atrocities, but never actually saying anything about it, which seems to be the tack the film itself is taking
That war is bad, but never bothering to explore the how’s and why’s of the conflict
The most hints we get as to why the president is bad is a mention that he has a third term (gasp) and ordered air strikes on civilians
Which, uh, I suppose is enough for some people, but the vociferousness with which the forces of the aptly named Western Forces pursue and execute the president suggest something far more interesting, which the movie could not even be bothered to even try and explore
To make a film about the United States becoming balkanized without bothering to even offer a smidgen of backstory as to its causes or even into the politics of the sides only serves to make the film a hollow shell
We’re left with nothing to the film, and it seems like they’re not even bothered by that, which is an absolute shame because they could have at least tried to say something
Instead, they chose very hard to say absolutely nothing, which only makes the apathy all the worse
Is the message not “division is bad and we should not be divided because this will happen otherwise” ?
The civil war itself sounds like it’s a disaster movie, as if civil wars are forces of nature like a volcano is. The message is then simply “prevent this disaster”.
I don’t even see that. Like the movie doesn’t make the civil war seem like a bad thing. Just a thing that is happening. I could see liberals taking that from the movie, but nothing in there says the war that’s happening is bad. In fact the president gets mocked by one of the propagandists and then shot in the end. You could argue the movie actually takes the side of the secessionists.