Alex Garland's Civil War an illogical, unexplained mess
A special to the Hutchinson Tribune from Dan Deming
To illustrate how bad movies that make money are becoming, the top box office offering this past weekend was "Civil War." How anyone with half a brain could enjoy this so-called "dystopian thriller" (and I don't know what that means) is far beyond my comprehension, but on Rotten Tomatoes, often a good measure of audience favorability, 75 percent said they liked Civil War.
The primary demo for this movie is 18 to 34-year-olds, and I'm willing to bet a huge majority of folks 50 plus would find it insulting and list one hour and 49 minutes of their lives, which could have been spent more logically by polishing their shoes or going to the rest room.
Warning: The Civil War has nothing to do with the Civil War most of us know about. It's a highly concocted, impossible-to-piece-together, logically drained story of Texas and California seceding from the United States coupled with a revolution in Washington, D.C., aimed at killing the President, who apparently was trying to hold the Union together.
So many things appearing on the screen go unexplained that it's foolish to try unraveling virtually anything. The movie is molded around two women photojournalists, the lead played by Kirsten Dunst, who get embedded with the military. Along the way, if you are dumb enough to go, you'll see bloody, disturbing gore and violence, lots of foul language and plenty of reasons why Civil War is rated R.
Bottle scenes are well-crafted, realistic and well-produced, but as one reviewer accurately said, "This movie has all the nutritional value of popcorn.” She then gave it two out of four possible stars, which is at least one and a half stars, way too many. I only went to Civil War because a good friend thought it might be worth seeing. Both of us have pledged not to tell anyone we were in the theater along with three other patrons, and we have promised to seek forgiveness from the Lord.