Like many of you, I’m sure, I love movies, even bad ones and especially some bad ones. I prefer Art House fare mostly but some mass market stuff too — Superhero stuff, cartoons, comedy, action movies with certain familiar faces, etc. There are some that are stupid but fun in a sort of transgressive way — anybody ever see “Marcie X” with Lisa Kudrow as a rap producer? Probably not.
Such is the current “Civil War” movie which chronicles the adventures of news reporters and photographers in the midst of an American Civil War in the maybe near future — but not what you expected!
Spoiler Alert: it ends badly for the bad guy, The President in his third term (!)...played by the wonderful Nick Offerman as kind of a cameo really.
See, when I heard there was this movie “Civil War” it was gonna be about right-wing nutjobs making a secession in Idaho or such, Not so!
Of course, movies are and aren’t about what they say and show — like “Citizen Kane” wasn’t about William Randolph Hearst (but it really was).
No, the “Civil War” is instigated by the secession of Texas, Florida, and...California? Chew on that a little bit. Obviously they’re short on the details. I assume some got cut out but I suspect mostly on purpose. The scenes look like the present day but it’s apparently supposed to be some time in the near future, but they don’t ever really say why the states seceded and so forth.
The movie stars Kirsten Dunst as a news photographer, traveling with reporters played by Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson across a war-torn nation. In Missouri they pick up a teenager (Cailee Spaeny) who wants to become a news photographer It seems the Texas-California forces are at Charlottesville (Virginia) staging a final assault on The White House where this rogue third term President is holed up — IOW, it’s the last week of this particular Civil War.
There’s a lot of scenes of famine, the breakdown of order and commerce, refugees, local militias unaffiliated with the rebel army and so forth: When we went to see it at our local theatre three teenagers ahead of us wanted to see it but were turned away because they were under 17).
There’s very little specificity about why there’s a Civil War, but, it implies it’s because The President made a mess of things. In West Virginia, Dunst pays for gas with Canadian money, implying the U.S. dollar is no longer respected.
It’s not gonna be no award winner — potboiler movies get released in January to April. Dunst showed promise. I remember seeing her as a racist manager in “Hidden Figures” — the movie about African American female mathematicians working for NASA in its formative years in a segregated lab. She’s a risk-taker. She and her husband Jesse Plemons are a power couple: actors, producers, and directors. They have a son named Ennis and I wonder if he was named after Big Ennis and Little Ennis from “smokey and the Bandit” or from the town of Ennis, Texas.
Also Moura and McKinley Henderson shine. The scenes of the California-Texas forces showcase military equipment. Apparently much of the military joined the secession. There’s at least two African female officers barking orders.
It seems the President is based on Off-Brand Orban, but they never say. i’d give it a B- and worth a look.