A24: Civil War by Alex Garland

[MaHaL]

I was invited to see this movie so I went not knowing the first thing about it.
I did see a poster that is about it.

This movie have not blown me away.
But I did enjoy it.

Click to shrink...

I'm in the same boat. I think my total exposure to the film pre-watch was scrolling past a picture of some soldiers in a boat on twitter.

I liked it. The sound design was killer and the film as a whole looked good. In terms of actions scenes it's probably up there for most realistic modern military action scenes in recent years. All of the performances were killer, I really liked Stephen McKinley Henderson in particular but everyone made me feel something.

Rukaio Alter on SB has probably put it best when it comes to how the film splits it's attention.

Just watched it and I can confirm that, contrary to what the advertising suggests, this isn't really a movie about a second American Civil War. It's a movie about war journalists/war journalism that just happens to have the gimmick of being set in a second American Civil War. It's honestly not a bad movie about war journalists and I enjoyed watching it, but if you're going in expecting the titular civil war to have any real depth to it, you're going to be disappointed.

Click to shrink...

The film very much cares how seeing this violence affects war reporters, about how it being in the home country effects them compared to it being overseas, and how being brought into the violence themselves instead of only being witnesses to it changes them.

The film couldn't give less of a shit about why America has turned into 4 warring factions or what those factions care about.

 

[MarekGutkowski]

In terms of actions scenes it's probably up there for most realistic modern military action scenes in recent years.

Click to shrink...

Hmm...
How to put it politely?
This thing makes scenes from Godzilla 1997 look realistic.
The tactics on display are something expected from drugged-up yahoos in Toyota pick-up overthrowing a dictator in an African country in the 1990s.
The helicopter in the attack on the White House made negative amount of sense.
No one would put the rotor between buildings unless the helicopter was already on fire with a dead engine.
No one would fly anywhere as close to the fighting.
That helicopter should have been dead already as conflict as early as Yugoslavian Civil War shown that helicopters die around cities.
The scale of the conflict is all over the place.
On one hand we have a bunch of tacti-cool dudebros, that clearly are doing this for shit and/or giggles because the Hawaiian shirts they have under the tacti-cool vest are clean. And we also have what is a sizable percentage of F-22 is existence in another scene.



This is not a bad movie. I like it and it struck a cord with me on a few levels.
Realistic battle scenes it has not.

 

[Born in the USSA]

The dude bros are boogaloos, it's a specific meta-ironic militia aesthetic. IIRC they're credited as mercenaries.

 

[silentorphan]

Box Office: ‘Civil War’ Draws Blood to Beat ‘Abigail’ and Stay No. 1 With $11M Second Weekend

Guy Ritchie's Henry Cavill-starrer 'The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare' was also new, along with 'Abigail,' the latest movie from Radio Silence.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

Alex Garland's film, starring Kirsten Dunst as a photojournalist who traverses a violently divided United States, added $11.12 million in its second weekend of release. It has generated $44.8 million so far and already stands as one of A24's top five highest-grossing movies of all time. With a $50 million price tag, it's also the indie distributor's most expensive film to date.

Click to shrink...