{"id":23000,"date":"2024-04-14T01:21:10","date_gmt":"2024-04-14T05:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=23000"},"modified":"2024-04-14T01:21:10","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T05:21:10","slug":"civil-war-when-a-strong-idea-remains-on-the-page","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemadailyus.com\/?p=23000","title":{"rendered":"‘Civil War’: When a Strong Idea Remains On the Page…"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his previous three movies as a director, <\/span>Alex Garland<\/b><\/a> has demonstrated the courage to bring the genre he picked almost to its extreme consequences, delivering stunning, contemporary nightmares capable of insinuating under the viewer\u2019s skin. <\/span>Ex Machina<\/b><\/a>, <\/span>Annihilation<\/b><\/a>, and particularly <\/span>Men<\/b><\/a> were developed through solid stories, complex characters, and the vision of a cinematic universe presented with precision and coherence. All these elements are way less effective in his fourth <\/span>Civil War<\/b><\/a>, with the result that we can experience it as a quite decent movie, but at the same time leave the theater with the bitter feeling of what it could have been if realized with the sharpness of the other three.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first issue that Civil War encounters is most likely the setting itself: this time <\/span>Garland<\/span>\u00a0doesn\u2019t drift away into a fantastic or terrifying world but chooses instead to get closer to the reality of our times, showing a slightly futuristic America severely hurt by an internal conflict caused by a far-right President (<\/span>Nick Offerman) who wants to rule the Country like a tyrant. The main characters of <\/span>Civil War<\/b> are two reporters and two photographers who embark on a journey in the heart of the war zone to reach Washington D.C. and interview the President himself. <\/span><\/p>\n

Garland\u00a0sets a context that wants to offer a social-political commentary on what the United States is going through in our days but hasn\u2019t the courage to dig deeper in his own \u201cuniverse\u201d to make the movie a true, effective dystopian mirror of today. Once the setting is prepared, unfortunately, it seems to remain way too in the background to result in some way effective. Instead, the director\/screenwriter chooses to focus entirely on the reporters and their relationships, developing characters who are often rhetorical, seldom original, and in at least a couple of sequences pretty unbelievable. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Civil<\/p>\n

Garland shows how good as a director he has become, hiding behind the excellent aesthetic of his movie the fact that he picked the easiest way to tell this story, making it a melodrama lacking the strength of truly questioning what\u2019s going on today in the Country. <\/span><\/p>\n

The relationship between the famous and cynic war photographer Lee (<\/span>Kirsten Dunst) and the young and idealistic wannabe Jessie (<\/span>Cailee Spaeny) is the main engine in the screenplay, developed through a series of ideas and plot twists that don\u2019t strike as very original but in the end work to bring the story to the showdown. This is where <\/span>Civil War<\/b> becomes incredibly anti-climatic: while in a couple of action sequences, the audience can experience the tension and the violence of the war, in the last fifteen minutes Garland exceeds in a series of fights that are surprisingly less thrilling, including a final sequence which delivers a grotesque-dark comedy tone honestly quite pointless.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Civil War<\/b> looks like that kind of project incredibly appealing and provocative on the page, but then little by little becoming more difficult to handle when it comes to translating it into a real movie. <\/span>Garland plays constantly with the blurry areas between realism and sci-fi but in the end, he seems pretty uncertain about what he wants to talk about. What he has delivered is a movie that works on the surface but lacks depth, wasting the precious chance of making a shocking warning about what the United States could face in the near, too near future\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Civil<\/p>\n

Rate: C<\/b><\/p>\n

Check out more Adriano’s articles.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the trailer of the film.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n