Civil War (2024) - Conflict Origin Explained and Ending Implications

Alex Garland's Civil War is an incredible feat of cinematic accomplishment, offering an unnervingly realistic insight into the possible massive conflict that could envelop the real United States of America and how the society at large, seen through a photo lens of a journalist, tries to document and make sense of it. Everything Garland learned in films like Annihilation and Ex Machina is in this film, but there is so much more. At the same time, its depiction of the balance of power at the end of the war (or its first phase anyway) can be somewhat confusing. So, here's the chronological breakdown of the same timeline as far as I understand it - heavy spoilers ahead!

The film's premise begins somewhere in the present period - all of the technology shown in the film, including armaments, is contemporary and there's no hint that the plot is set even 10 or 20 years in the future. Instead, the film takes place in the form of a slightly alternative political reality, but with massive and horrific implications.

In that timeline, Nick Offerman's US President takes on his third term, somehow overriding the US Constitution. After that, he disbands the FBI, likely forcing additional police state rules on the citizens. This results in some form of citizen uprisings, but which, thanks to the US accessibility of weapons, turn deadly in no time at all. Here is where the tyrannical President authorizes the military to engage the uprisings with direct force, including very indiscriminate aerial bombings. This means that the Posse Comitatus Act - which bans federal troops from any kind of law enforcement activities - is no longer active. The US dollar implodes into inflation, becoming near-worthless and Washington D.C. becomes a fortified island of an ever-shrinking old USA. Uprisings turn into open warfare.  

Here, the civil war commences, but it still has a political dimension. The central and eastern US remain loyal to the President and others succeed instead of trying to bring down the regime from within a unified country. That includes three major new powers. Western Forces, made up of California and Texas, were now united despite their previous huge political differences. The New People's Army controls the Northwestern states, while the Florida Alliance is mainly focused on the Southeast region.

The Loyalist forces quickly begin to lose ground and initiative. The tide of war turns against the President mercilessly and without any chances for a reversal of fortunes. The start of the film’s plot showcases the moment when all three sessions factions flood into the central Loyalist states with the simple aim of killing the President. The suicide bombing at the start of the film shows that even states like New York, still loyal formally to the President, see him as a dictator who does not represent the actual USA.

The main characters too believe that the President is as good as dead. Over the course of the film, both Western Forces and Florida Alliance troops (which are present in the sequence where a squad of Hawaiian shirt-wearing soldiers kills a group of loyalist soldiers) slowly saturate the approaches to the D.C. area, facing little formal or well-organized resistance. At the same time, at least the Western Forces are equipped with serious logistics and armaments, including tanks and gunships. They could be the saviors of the USA, but clearly, the same faction doesn’t want anything like that. Instead, they are fighting for their own, new country.

The Battle for D.C. doesn’t change anything, apart from bringing more death to all included. In the end, the US President lies dead at the hands of Western Forces and Washington D.C. is now no-man's land. However, his killers are not there to liberate the USA of its tyrant. Instead, they’re simply fighting their enemy to the death. That means that the winning sides are just that - several sides, where no one wants to reestablish the old country. Western Forces already have their flag with only two stars. As the character Stephen McKinley Henderson notes, with the death of the common enemy, these sides will likely turn on each other.

Throughout the film as well, many instances, like the sniper battle on the winter fairground, imply that the process of everyone fighting everyone else has already begun. The mass grave scene underlines this with an additional dose of ethnic hatred that is now free to define new parties of the old US however anyone likes, echoing real-world horrors like those of the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Here as well, the blank term “Americans”, just like the term “Yugoslav” in 1993, for example, no longer means anything.

That’s the final concept of the film. The brutal end of a clearly tyrannical President didn’t solve anything. In essence, the situation is similar to the moment Muammar Gaddafi was killed in Libya or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The boogeyman might be dead, but the nightmare doesn’t just end, it even intensifies. In the film, each of the winning sides now has a lot of territory from the former Loyalist states that are right there for the taking. But, their borders and intentions are unclear and all are heavily armed - including the “neutral” civilians and many micro-factions that will only come about.

That is why the end of the Civil War film is not the end of the same fictional conflict. Instead, the state of war where some individuals (usually living on farms as the main character notes) could pretend is not happening will now engulf all of its participants. In the next phase of the civil war, there will be no quiet little towns and safe, isolated farms. They will all be swept into a Lebanon-like, all-against-all war status and with it, the last step of the complete destruction of the USA.

Two Paragraph Review: The Zone of Interest (2023)

Creating a film that takes on a different perspective on the Holocaust is not a new thing. Movies like The White Ribbon and The Counterfeiters quickly captured the attention of critics and audiences alike. However, few of them are as ambiguous on the surface in their topic and presentation as The Zone of Interest is. The film follows Rudolf Höss and his family, all of whom seem completely normal people. However, Rudolf is the commandant of a German death camp and their family home lies just beyond its walls.

In the film, director Jonathan Glazer does so much with the things unsaid, unseen, and finally, even unshown. In these moments, when the camera showcases nothing but colors, red and black mainly, the full force of the film can be presented. Through these colors and background sounds, the film showcases that evil is often neither malicious nor dumb, but simply present. The resonance of that idea with the modern world is not just poignant, it is bordering on a dark prophecy that could see the whole of humanity slid into oblivion of its own making.

Two Paragraph Review: Black Crab (2022)

There's a simple and very unique premise behind the Black Crab script. It goes like this: imagine a war action movie, only on ice skates. That might sound dumb, but somehow, the film's plot manages to find its sea legs (pun intended). It is set in an undefined post-apocalyptic Nordic state, where a group of soldiers has to deliver a powerful weapon behind enemy lines using frozen waters around it.

The Director of the film, Adam Berg, got his first shot at a feature-length movie with Black Crab. He did a commendable job, just like his leading lady, the very talented Noomi Rapace. But, there's something off with the film as well, akin to some form of stable, but still shoddily made hut. The ice skate gimmick grows old eventually. At the same time, there is hardly a way to connect with the characters and the ending ultimately fails to change any of that. That is why the same shoddy hut, like the film, doesn't fold immediately, but overall, ends up being a very forgettable sight.

Two-Paragraph Review: Greyhound (2020)

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably sick of Tom Hanks commandeering any kind of big vehicle. From boats to airplanes, Hanks was there. So, you can imagine I wasn’t too thrilled about the prospect of watching Grayhound, where he yet again takes control of a ship, this time in WW2 and the Atlantic ocean, as he protects a convoy from Nazi U-boats as a semi-trained first-time captain.

However, the sheer technical focus of the film is very refreshing. I’m clueless about what it was like to hunt subs with a destroyer but this movie paints a very good and dynamic picture, filled with a lot of old-school tech and people shouting orders about things I don’t get. The absence of any other element, besides a slow start and an unnecessary love interest of the aging Hanks, makes the 90-minute movie an ideal thing for all fans of war films who are otherwise more keen on watching a TV show than anything like this.

Movie Review: 1917 (2019)

There's no need to compliment Sam Mendes and his amazing cinematography. While he might be in the public consciousness mainly thanks to Skyfall and Spectre, in my mind, he's still the man who made history come alive as a present contemporary movie in American Beauty. In 1917, he again showcased his ability to compress small into big and vice versa, showing individuals' lives as a representation of the wider, bigger and the more unknown collective experience.

Also, as a clear work of passion, it is hard not to compare the film with Dunkirk, another unusual war movie from a brilliant director. Yet, while Nolan's work leaves that sense of trying to be something much grander while forcing itself to stay (not completely successfully) grounded in real people, 1917 is all about the people it features.

Two-Paragraph Review: A Private War (2018)

I'm not sure if it's really possible to perceive a film like A Private War without having some kind of position towards the conflicts it features. Sure, the film tries to be objective and somehow shift the focus from the wars to the journalists who were brave to traverse them, but it is hard to gauge how successful is it in the same design. This is especially true when it comes to Libya and the war that took place there (and still goes on), now with all that we know in 2019.

Across all of this, A Private War review should, in theory, avoid the choking geopolitical ramifications of the role Western media played in all of that and focus on Rosamund Pike and her great depiction of Marie Colvin. Yet, for me, the focus of the film is not the Colvin’s personal life but the editorial decisions back in London and the how and the why of those moments. In that setup, it is Tom Hollander as Sean Ryan of the Sunday Times who is actually the main character. Sadly, the film offers no answers to the same questions. Marie Colvin might have not been interested in which plane or artillery piece bombed a village, but I can’t help but wonder who sold and shipped those weapons there, as well as those on the other side.

Two-Paragraph Review: Overlord (2018)

Overlord is a great movie and there should be no doubt about that - it’s one of my biggest positive surprises in this hybrid horror genre since Bone Tomahawk. Its director, Julius Avery, does a precise and very technical, but at the same time bold and unexpected slalom run through horror, war movie, and splatter adventure comedy genres. In the film, there are parts that are in equal measure worthy of Saving Private Ryan, Inglourious Basterds, and The Dirty Dozen.

At the same time, Avery managed to make a really good movie without the use of practically any big actress or actor. Regardless, through the use of plenty of German and French being mixed up with the English language, its cast pulls off an engaging movie. The plot tells the story of a small band of survivor paratroopers on a mission to blow up a Nazi installation on D-Day - there, however, they find things much more dangerous than a radio jamming facility.  In the hell ride that comes after this discovery, the actors and Avery do much more and present it as a great and very gory adventure. You don’t want to miss out on this gem of a film, especially if you find war films and those from the WW2 era at list slightly interesting.

Two Paragraph Review: Anthropoid (2016) - That Czech-English though

Copyright: Bleecker Street

Aside from touching upon the horrors of the Nazi occupation pretty much anywhere, Anthropoid delves deep into the issue of western actors struggling with a Slavic accent that is not Russian. Here, people like Cillian Murphy and Toby Jones work with local stars as they try to figure out that particular brand of Slavic English and end up sounding strange (at least to me).

Apart from that, the film showcases the assassination attempt of Reinhard Heydrich who got a back full of fine automotive leather along with grenade fragments for his contribution the Third Reich, dying a painful and slow death that is never shown on screen. What is shown is the slow buildup to the attack and then a prolonged war-themed torture porn segment featuring the assassins and resistance members being hunted down and killed in Prague.

Coming Soon: Dunkirk

If war is hell, then the Battle of Dunkirk was a special kind of hell, which saw thousands die in a small patch of land in France as BEF and their allies desperately tried to evacuate by sea as many soldiers from the mainland Europe as possible.

Now, Christoper Nolan is making a film simply called Dunkirk which will showcase the evacuation. The movie promises to deliver a war epic hopefully in the footprints of modern films like Fury and it comes to the theaters in summer of 2017.

Have a look at a short trailer that recently came out.

Film Review: American Sniper (2014)

Copyright: Warner Bros. Pictures

There are three types of men, American Sniper teaches us. These are the sheep, which can’t defend themselves, wolves who are the predators, and the sheepdogs. The last kind of people is “blessed with aggression”, but only uses it to protect the sheep.

The sheepdogs, however, apparently also make substantially problematic main characters in war dramas. From the beginning, we watch Chris Kyle, the deadliest recorder sniper in the US history, fights his way through life and war. Kyle is a simple dude who only wants to protect his buddies in the field of battle, and does the same with a very clear consciousness.

Film Review: Fury

Copyright: Columbia Pictures

When you break it down, movies are here to provide us with a transient experience. For their duration, they are here to take us to a new place and present to us the things that are going on over there. The more sensations movies encompass, the better – on the simplest level, we see and hear things that are present on the screen. At its best, cinema allows us to feel things that are taking place over there.

Fury allowed me to experience a nauseating 130 minutes of World War II. During this time, I was completely transported to western Germany, where a tank crew is going through the last month of the war. Although it is clear that the Nazi Germany is sinking into the mud covered ground, elements of the SS are still refusing to lay down their arms.

The tank, called Fury, is led by Don Collier, an emotionally wrecked man and a perfect warrior. The rest of the crew also saw much action on two continents, and it shows. One day, their comrade is killed, and Norman, a trained clerk, comes to take its place, still fresh from boot camp. All along, the killing and the dying continues. Still, no matter what, Fury presses on.

Film Review: The Monuments Men

Copyright: 20th Century Fox

This wasn't the way to make a war film, or any other kind of film. The Monuments Men just doesn’t know how to connect the audience with its characters or its topic, although George Clooney tries desperately to do this. But, he does it by the old Hollywood playbook, first by introducing a merry band of men that are to form an Allied unit in the last stage of the 2.

World war, tasked with the protection of cultural treasures of Western Europe. Then Clooney, playing the lead character and directing at the same time (when you’re good looking you can do anything), further develops his Dirty Dozen Artists and Museum Curators, giving us the French guy, the Matt Damon guy, the Funny guy and the Cynical guy to somehow bind us to them.

This doesn’t work. There are too many of them, and it doesn’t matter that Bill Murray and John Goodman play them, they aren’t relevant enough to become important. Even worse, Clooney sends some of them to a secret mission in the German occupied France, and naturally this adds to the incoherence of the film.

Film Review: Lone Survivor

Copyright: Foresight Unlimited

If you know how the movie ends, does it spoil all the fun? Well, no. A lot of times the movies start from the end of the story and work their way backwards. Lone Survivor is a type of film, which doesn’t regard the intrigue of the end as something really important. The whole plot of a Navy Seal mission in Afghanistan that went from bad to worse is a true historical event and is well-known, even notorious because of the lost American lives (Afghan live were also lost in great numbers, but those guys don’t have Hollywood so screw them).

Peter Berg directed this film in a way that is extra safe. It focuses on the camaraderie and the almost suicidal willingness of the Navy Seals when it comes to following orders. Berg stays away from the question what were those guys even doing in the Afghan mountains, fighting a war against the Taliban. To the soldiers, those enemies could be Martians or the British regulars; it just doesn’t matter, because they have to die.