Daniel Rindone

This is not a movie about documenting the unfolding events of a modern American Civil War like the trailers lead you to believe. This is a movie about self-centered and complacent journalists, and not a good one at that. Allow me to explain: (Spoiler Free) BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The movie follows a band of combat photographers including Mary Jane, Pablo Escobar, that super computer guy from Dune 1, and an ambitious kid that idolizes MJ. This mismatched band are going on a little road trip from NYC to DC (through an active war zone, no less) to attempt to interview the President about his motives on starting the war. LACK OF GROUNDED PURPOSE: Logic often evades nearly every encounter in this movie. It expects you to take it at surface level and to not think deeper about this quest, or anything that happens on it. Normally I’d forgive this if it were entertaining. However, with the implied experience level of the crew making it, the lack of organization, planning, or understanding of what they’re getting themselves into is unbelievably astounding. It feels like the message of this war is muddled in jokes about ‘getting in the action’, ‘the perfect shot’, or putting aside moral dilemmas in order to achieve this ‘perfect’ shot. It makes the documentation of battle look like a game or a race rather than a duty to inform the public and the world. The entire nature of the conflict, as well as why we should even care about any of this in the first place, is completely lost because of this. DISORGANIZED: The aforementioned nature leads to the tone of the movie being totally off a majority of the time. Nothing ever feels right in a scene. It’s like someone put the idea of the movie and brief character descriptions into AI and the script was whatever result was spit out. The pacing is awful, scenes feel long for no reason, and we are inundated with unnecessary exposition. Action is few and far between, and when it is present, it’s not compelling nor does it feel authentic. This is mainly due to the characters making the most bafflingly stupid moves possible in order to take a picture of something. BLAND PERFORMANCES: Honestly, none of the performances in this movie made me care at all about any of the characters. They may as well have cast Kristen Stewart or Brie Larson for the MJ role because the emotional range for it is about equivalent to an angry plank of wood throughout. I don’t think I heard any meaningful dialogue between anyone in the entire movie. Often times I was hoping that a stray round of artillery would hit their SUV to make all the cringe stop. SUMMARY: Civil War would be one star for me, however the concept of this piece is very intriguing and the cinematography (while completely out of place and consistently to the worst soundtrack I’ve heard in a movie in recent memory) is excellent. Shots are beautiful, scenery epic at times, creativity present, and near the end I got a bit more of that military experience that I, at least, was hoping for. At the end of the movie I felt a bad taste in my mouth toward these photographers and didn’t really care if they lived or died. The characters had no arcs or personal growth at all. This entire concept was put in better execution, via a subplot at that, through the character Joe Galloway in ‘We Were Soldiers’. I may go watch that now to get the taste out of my mouth. TL;DR: Save your money. This movie is basically a complete wash by blowing its intriguing concept in favor of basically following a group of glorified instagram influencers. Wait until it hits streaming platforms for a cheap rental. Good concept, awful execution.