[Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/civil_war_2024): 88% (from 26 reviews) with 8.20 in average rating
[Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/movie/civil-war/): 73/100 (12 critics)
As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. Meanwhile, I’ll post some short reviews on the movie. It’s structured like this: **quote first, source second.** Beware, some contain spoilers.
> With the precision and length of its violent battle sequences, it’s clear Civil War operates as a clarion call. Garland wrote the film in 2020 as he watched cogs on America’s self-mythologizing exceptionalist machine turn, propelling the nation into a nightmare. With this latest film, he sounds the alarm, wondering less about how a country walks blindly into its own destruction and more about what happens when it does.
-[Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/civil-war-review-kirsten-dunst-alex-garland-1235852455/)
> One thing that works in “Civil War” is bringing the devastation of war home: Seeing American cities reduced to bombed-out rubble is shocking, which leads to a sobering reminder that this is already what life is like for many around the world. Today, it’s the people of Gaza. Tomorrow, it’ll be someone else. The framework of this movie may be science fiction, but the chaotic, morally bankrupt reality of war isn’t. It’s a return to form for its director after the misstep of “Men,” a film that’s grim and harrowing by design. The question is, is the emptiness that sets in once the shock has worn off intentional as well?
-[Katie Rife, IndieWire](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/civil-war-movie-review-alex-garland-a24-1234964914/): B
> It’s the most upsetting dystopian vision yet from the sci-fi brain that killed off all of London for the zombie uprising depicted in “28 Days Later,” and one that can’t be easily consumed as entertainment. A provocative shock to the system, “Civil War” is designed to be divisive. Ironically, it’s also meant to bring folks together.
-[Peter Debruge, Variety](https://variety.com/2024/film/reviews/civil-war-review-1235942401/)
> I’ve purposefully avoided describing a lot of the story in this review because I want people to go in cold, as I did, and experience the movie as sort of picaresque narrative consisting of set pieces that test the characters morally and ethically as well as physically, from one day and one moment to the next. Suffice to say that the final section brings every thematic element together in a perfectly horrifying fashion and ends with a moment of self-actualization I don’t think I’ll ever be able to shake.
-[Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/civil-war-movie-review-2024): 4/4
> A movie, even a surprisingly pretty good one like this, won’t provide all the answers to these existential issues nor does it to seek to. What it can do, amidst the cacophony of explosions, is meaningfully hold up a mirror. Though the portrait we get is broken and fragmented, in its final moments “Civil War” still manages to uncover an ugly yet necessary truth in the rubble of the old world. Garland gets that great final shot, but at what cost?
-[Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap](https://www.thewrap.com/kirsten-dunst-civil-war-review-alex-garland/)
> Garland’s Civil War gives little to hold on to on the level of character or world-building, which leaves us with effective but limited visual provocation – the capital in flames, empty highways a viscerally tense shootout in the White House. The brutal images of war, but not the messy hearts or minds behind them.
-[Adrian Horton, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/15/civil-war-review): 3/5
> Civil War offers a lot of food for thought on the surface, yet you’re never quite sure what you’re tasting or why, exactly. No one wants a PSA or easy finger-pointing here, any more than you would have wanted Garland’s previous film Men — as unnerving and nauseating a film about rampant toxic masculinity as you’ll ever come across — to simply scream “Harvey Weinstein!” at you. And the fact that you can view its ending in a certain light as hopeful does suggest that, yes, this country has faced countless seismic hurdles and yet we still endure to form a more perfect union. Yet you’ll find yourself going back to that “explore or exploit” conundrum a lot during the movie’s near-two-hour running time. It’s feeding into a dystopian vision that’s already running in our heads. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, etc. So why does this just feel like more of the same white noise pitched at a slightly higher frequency?
-[David Fear, Rolling Stone](https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-reviews/civil-war-review-kirsten-dunst-alex-garland-1234980226/)
> Ultimately, Civil War feels like a missed opportunity. The director’s vision of a fractured America, embroiled in conflict, holds the potential for introspection on our current societal divisions. However, the film’s execution, hampered by thin characterization, a lackluster narrative, and an overreliance on spectacle over substance, left me disengaged. In its attempt to navigate the complexities of war, journalism, and the human condition, the film finds itself caught in the crossfire, unable to deliver the profound impact it aspires to achieve.
-[Valerie Complex, Deadline Hollywood](https://deadline.com/2024/03/civil-war-review-alex-garlands-journey-through-desolation-loses-its-way-sxsw-1235859621/)
> So when the film asks us to accompany the characters into one of the most relentless war sequences of recent years, there’s an unusual sense of decorum. We’re bearing witness to an exacting recreation of historical events that haven’t actually happened. And we, the audience from this reality, are asked to take it all as a warning. This is the movie that gets made if we don’t fix our sh*t. And these events, recorded with such raw reality by Garland and his crew, are exactly what we want to avoid at all costs.
-[Jacob Hall, /FILM](https://www.slashfilm.com/1540289/civil-war-review-alex-garland-terrifying-war-movie-leave-you-shaken-sxsw-2024/): 8.5/10
> Those looking to “Civil War” for neat ideologies will leave disappointed; the film is destined to be broken down as proof both for and against Garland’s problematic worldview. But taken for what it is — a thought exercise on the inevitable future for any nation defined by authoritarianism — one can appreciate that not having any easy answers is the entire point. If we as a nation gaze too long into the abyss, Garland suggests, then eventually, the abyss will take the good and the bad alike. That makes “Civil War” the movie event of the year — and the post-movie group discussion of your lifetime.
-[Matthew Monagle, The Playlist](https://theplaylist.net/civil-war-review-alex-garlands-latest-is-both-unforgettable-challenging-as-hell-sxsw-20240315/): A–
> while it does feel opportunistic to frame their story specifically within a new American civil war — whether a given viewer sees that narrative choice as timely and edgy or cynical attention-grabbing — the setting still feels far less important than the vivid, emotional, richly complicated drama around two people, a veteran and a newbie, each pursuing the same dangerous job in their own unique way. Civil War seems like the kind of movie people will mostly talk about for all the wrong reasons, and without seeing it first. It isn’t what those people will think it is. It’s something better, more timely, and more thrilling — a thoroughly engaging war drama that’s more about people than about politics.
-[Tasha Robinson, Polygon](https://www.polygon.com/24099490/civil-war-review-2024)
> Still, even for Garland’s adept visual storytelling, supported by daring cuts by Jake Roberts and offbeat needledrops, the core of Civil War feels hollow. It’s very easy to throw up a stream of barbarity on the screen and say it has deeper meaning and is telling a firmer truth. But at what point are you required to give more? Garland appears to be aiming for the profundity of Come And See — the very loss of innocence, as perfectly balanced by Dunst and Spaeny, through the repeating of craven cycles is the tragedy that breaks the heart. It is just not clear by the end, when this mostly risky film goes fully melodramatic in the Hollywood sense, whether Garland possesses the control necessary to fully capture the horrors.
-[Robert Daniels, Screen Daily](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/civil-war-sxsw-review/5191613.article)
> As with all of his movies, Garland doesn’t provide easy answers. Though Civil War is told with blockbuster oomph, it often feels as frustratingly elliptical as a much smaller movie. Even so, I left the theater quite exhilarated. The film has some of the best combat sequences I’ve seen in a while, and Garland can ratchet up tension as well as any working filmmaker. Beyond that, it’s exciting to watch him scale up his ambitions without diminishing his provocations — there’s no one to root for, and no real reward waiting at the end of this miserable quest.
-[David Sims, The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/03/civil-war-movie-review/677759/)
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**PLOT**
In the near future, a team of journalists travel across the United States during the rapidly escalating Second American Civil War that has engulfed the entire nation, between the American government and the separatist “Western Forces” led by Texas and California. The film documents the journalists struggling to survive during a time when the government has become a dystopian dictatorship and partisan extremist militias regularly commit war crimes.
**DIRECTOR/WRITER**
Alex Garland
**MUSIC**
Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow
**CINEMATOGRAPHY**
Rob Hardy
**EDITOR**
Jake Roberts
**RELEASE DATE**
– March 14, 2024 (SXSW)
– April 12, 2024 (worldwide)
**RUNTIME**
109 minutes
**BUDGET**
$50 million (most expensive A24 film so far)
**STARRING**
– Kirsten Dunst as Lee
– Wagner Moura as Joel
– Cailee Spaeny as Jessie
– Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy
– Sonoya Mizuno as Anya
– Jesse Plemons as Unnamed Soldier
– Nick Offerman as the President of the United States
Source: self.boxoffice
