Justin N/A

Intense war film that has some interesting scenes and boilerplate intrepid journalists, but the premise is unbelievable. I understand the choice to not do an exhaustive background as to how a second civil war in the US came about. Any kind of extrapolation of current events of a red state vs blue state narrative would have been too on the nose and easy fodder for cultural criticism. But to expect the audience to accept that TX and CA form a “western alliance” against DC is asking us to suspend all disbelief. Seemingly this alliance was picked because those are the only two states large enough to conceivably topple the federal government, though I got a chuckle over the passing mention of Florida trying to pressure its neighbors to join the insurrection. But it’s also hard to believe that typical Americans would have the commitment (even behind states) to sustain a long bloody war, and that’s to say nothing of Wall Street and the corporations that run our economy. They fund wars abroad, not at home. So in summary, good video game intensity fight scenes and audio on top of an unexamined and hard to swallow plot line.

I liked this film. It’s disturbing in a very intentional yet unconventional way. So, normally, I don’t like gratuitous violence or disturbing imagery if it’s not in service to a bigger thought provoking point. This film wasn’t “spoiler” visually violent. Far from it. Rather, the horrific treatment of the victims of the Holocaust is portrayed through the complete cognitive dissonance and justification of those horrors from the perpetrators of the violence in the film. This was achieved primarily by the audio of the film in a way I can honestly say I’ve never quite experienced. In one scene, planks being laid onto a greenhouse are interpersed with the sound of gunfire, the thuds of both so intermingled they’re indistinguishable. It’s normalized. Some reviewers who have panned this film have complained that the main characters are never fleshed out. We never really get a plot or learn their motivations. But to me it was pretty obvious that this wasn’t an oversight on the filmmakers part and rather a choice. This film, more than any other I’ve ever seen about WWII, captured the true banality of evil required by a nation to carry out such a large scale of destruction. And without mencing words, the unsaid inescapable point being made is that a nation of the descendants of the victims in the film is now crafting its own justification while perpetrating great harm on another group. Hard stuff to swallow for some, but executed pretty brilliantly.

(First episode spoiler) An ex con gangster excommunicated to set up in Tulsa hops a cab and on a whim stops at a dispensary, whereby he proceeds to knock out the security with a water bottle and successfully bullies the owner into giving him 20% of his store’s profit. No police ever called, all accomplished in an afternoon. If you can swallow the absurdity of this premise and wanna see some woke warriors get owned by an elderly Sly Stallone you’ll prob like this show.