In a dystopian future where civil war is tearing apart the United States, four war journalist friends take a perilous journey across the war-torn US, determined to interview the President before he is overthrown. 

Welcome to the world of war journalism, a profession not for the faint of heart, or stomach, a job that literally requires one to take photographs of full-on executions, mass slaughter, the hideous aftermath of battles, and even be in the thick of things while actual bullets are flying through the air. The cameras eye has to catch everything with brutal honesty, unflinching even as the hand, the heart, and the eye of the person clicking the shutter button sometimes cannot be. So it makes perfect sense that the film starts off by saying their war journalists are a rather unique, if utterly crazy, breed unto themselves. 

Lee (Kirsten Dunst) is a legend in the war journalism biz, with a killer reputation for getting some of the most memorable shots ever, in battle hot-spots all over the world, but especially here in the war-torn United States, right as the initial battles for civil war began. Lee is known among her peers as being hard-bitten and stoic, capable of getting the perfect shot even as dead bodies are literally falling next to her, and not blinking or backing down. But privately, Lee’s inevitable PTSD is beginning to rear its nasty head, and you just know, when that mental dam breaks, likely so will Lee’s mind. 

Lee’s colleague for Reuters and good friend Joel (Wagner Moura) is another odd duck, a war journalist who’s less camera-happy and more main logistics, driver, coordination and such. Joel is the guy who yanks the rookie out of the way of the soldiers heading into a live-fire room before she can cross their line of fire, like he’s done a million times for Lee before. Joel drinks and smokes and catches forty winks whenever he can, which isn’t often, star-gazing and engaging in wispy philosophy with his fellows, still clinging to his bits of humanity this job left him by his fingernails. 

Then there’s Lee’s mentor from the New York Times, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), though considerably older and a lot more infirm than Lee or Joel, he is still gamely talking shop with Lee about the raging civil war, but is well aware that his time in the trenches has likely come to its end. Still, Lee’s bold plan to travel across battling America all the way to the beleaguered White House, determined to interview the President (Nick Offerman) before he’s forcibly removed from office, scares the hell out of Sammy. And terrified though he might be, one last rush of journalism, of the hunt for the truth under the most dangerous of circumstances, is vaguely enticing too. 

Lastly is our rookie, practically a fledgling bird, determined to use her old-fashioned camera to take the same kind of shots as her hero Lee, she’s called Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Somehow Jessie has been bitten by the photography bug too, and instead of taking pictures of nature or doing the inevitable social media dumbassery, Jessie is insistent that she join Lee and Joel and Sammy in their trek across the conflicted U.S. to interview the President too. Like a housecat trying to do an internship with a pride of lions, Jessie has little idea of the atrocities she’s soon to become embroiled in. 

Vague references to sides are made in the movie, mainly the forces of Texas and California, who have both apparently succeeded from the current U.S. administration entirely and are waging war against the President and his flunkies themselves. But honestly, who is on which side doesn’t seem to matter anymore, as Lee and her cohorts travel across the blighted landscape of what was once a vibrant world power, for one simple reason: now everyone, every single last person in the United States, is potentially an enemy. It’s like that infamous line from John Carpenter’s The Thing: “Nobody trusts anybody now … and we’re all very tired.” 

The job of the journalist is to bring the truth to the public. Right? But the increasing distrust both from without and within, causes the general reaction to our war journalists to be usually either one of dismissal, weary eye-rolling capitulation, or downright murderous. It’s never mattered less that a journalist is supposed to be provided free full access to all governmental and political doings, no matter how dangerous they might be to the reporter. Indeed, this is brought home rather finally when, towards the latter half of the film, our intrepid gang, joined by their fellow journalists Bohai and Tony, have some of their number summarily executed, for not being “American”. This scene, starring an uncredited Jesse Plemons, husband of Kirsten Dunst in real life, as the very-very white militiaman wearing scarlet shades who performs the executions, could be an analogue for the entire situation in the U.S. government of the last decade or so, here in the really-real world. And the thought is utterly terrifying. 

After way too many trials, tribulations, executions and nearly constant destruction, our ragged reporters have made it to the capital, and are heading in with the military strike team poised to take down the President of the United States himself. Like the previously mentioned execution scenes, the tableau of the American President cowering on his back in the oval office, surrounded by ordinary citizens turned military commandos, led by a Black woman Commander, is just so rife with layers of meaning, it’s gorgeously grotesque. If even a tenth of that kind of energy could be harnessed for real-world government dealings, things would likely be very different for everyone. Just not necessarily in any kind of good or useful way. 

Civil War is a warning, a call to arms, a reminder of all we stand to lose, of all we’ve voluntarily somehow already surrendered, and it is an absolutely bleak vision of a future that’s far too close to happening. The film is brought to you by director Alex Garland, who also gave us the likes of Ex Machina and Annihilation, among many other credits to his name, and can be watched on Amazon Prime now.