Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Callee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley, Nick Offerman, and Sonoya Mizuno
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 109 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2024
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This American-British film tells the story of a group of journalists who journey across America to document a second American Civil War.
The film is set in an indeterminate (but near) future. It anticipates a second Civil War that grips the US, and shows a group of photo-journalists struggling to survive professionally and personally in a nation that has become a dictatorship and extremist groups engage freely in criminal behaviour.
The group is led by veteran war photographer, Lee Smith (Dunst). The President of the United States (Offerman) is power-hungry, and desperately trying to exercise control. On television, he informs the nation that everything is all right, but news footage tells viewers that is not true.
As a three-term President, he has disbanded the FBI and has authorised drone strikes against US civilians. Polarisation has morphed into factionalism, and conflict is everywhere. Nineteen American states have seceded, and a militia group led by the secessionist states is warring against loyalist states that are being commandeered by a corrupt, evangelical President. The group of journalists find themselves navigating a brutal, war-torn, country.
The journalists race against time under Lee’s leadership to reach Washington before rebel factions occupy the White House. They want to interview the President before he is forced to surrender or is killed. Troops are marching forward to force their way into the White House. The journalists’ focus is always to get a good story, with horror camera shots – whatever that story might turn out to be.
The film is a tough, gripping movie that explores the violent uncertainty of life in a nation that is steeped in crisis. It is a dystopian drama with highly aggressive, brutal battle sequences that show a nation heading towards destruction. America is balanced on a knife-edge, and the film is an intensely cautionary tale about times ahead, and its ultra-violence portends a terrible future. The movie ends in horror mode. Director Alex Garland has delivered an horrific wake-up call to show what could lie ahead: an America riddled with factions, aggression everywhere, and conflict from within.
The journalists have different agendas among themselves, and the film captures crises in gory, blood-soaked detail. It offers a disquieting trip into the heart of darkness. It anticipates an America that is violently divided, and it pushes journalism into morally uncertain and controversial areas.
Under Garland’s strong and decisive direction, the film offers a prophetic vision of a possible America to come. One can only hope that future reality is not where he has taken us.
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