Friday, April 12, 2024

Movie Review: Civil War

One of the craziest parts about the new movie "Civil War" is how for an entire two hours, with a story about photo journalists covering a major Civil War in the United States - between the East and the West is that there is not one single second devoted to the most important issue - why is there a Civil War going on? What caused a war like this to happen? How long has it been going on? What does each side believe? Have there been attempts at peace? Amazingly, none of these most important issues were ever addressed during the entire movie.

This entire story is about a series of scenes where 4 journalists, played by Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Wagner Moura, survive near death experiences all to take pictures of an ongoing war while traveling 900 miles to Washington DC.

There is a good deal of extreme violence in this film, in some cases too much unnecessary violence, all the while with no explanation why there was a war going on in the first place. This story also points out how ridiculous it is to have untrained people from the press within any war zone. They have no training, no guns and take huge risks with their lives only to take pictures. How many members of the press have died over the years covering wars, when their deaths were completely preventable, by a camera on the helmet of a soldier or a tank. The reporter David Bloom comes to mind from the Iraq War in 2003, who was a reporter who was killed because he was in a war zone, when he had no business being there.

As far as this movie, due to the glaring hole in the screenplay, not explaining the reasons for the Civil War, I do not agree with the 84% rating, giving this movie a 70% and a very moderate recommendation.

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