The newest dystopian thriller from A24 and director Alex Garland is a bone-chilling look at what happens when a country goes into war and how it affects people physically and mentally. Alex Garland doesn’t hold anything back by showing a ton of gruesome imagery, which comes off as realistic and disturbing to witness. In addition to its graphic scenes, the film contains a lot of great action sequences, which is cool to see A24 do because the film was made on a budget of 50 million dollars, the highest amount they’ve had to date. Kirsten Dunst delivers a fantastic performance as a photojournalist tasked to go to Washington, D.C., to interview and photograph the president, who is serving his third term in office. Dunst’s character feels very similar to Martin Sheen’s role in 1979’s “Apocalypse Now” because, in both movies, Sheen and Dunst are assigned to find someone. As the journey goes on, their opinions of the person and their personalities change drastically. The film also has a great supporting cast, including Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, and Nick Offerman. Thanks to Alex Garland’s incredible direction, powerful themes of psychology and the horrors of war, and a fantastic performance by Kirsten Dunst, “Civil War” is a haunting depiction of what happens if the United States turns against each other and its effects on certain people.
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