STATE OF THE UNION
THERE are casualties in every war. Compassion, optimism and common decency sustain bullet wounds in Alex Garland’s clinically executed military campaign.
It imagines a nightmarish near-future America torn apart by the authoritarian rule of a bombastic president (Nick Offerman) who has ordered air strikes on his own people.
California and Texas have seceded from the union to form the Western Forces and are aligned with eight states of the Florida Alliance to counter tyranny in the White House with heavily armed resistance.
Civil War journeys into the heart of darkness with renowned war photo-journalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and her journalist pal Joel (Wagner Moura), who are veterans of frontline reportage and wear their cynicism like cheap perfume.
Rumours circulate that the Western Forces intend to storm Washington DC on Independence Day, so Lee and Joel embark on a circuitous 857-mile odyssey from New York to the Capitol via Virginia, accompanied by their ageing mentor (Stephen Mckinley Henderson) and a 23-year-old aspiring photographer (Cailee Spaeny), whose inexperience is a liability when mortars start to fly.
The nerve-shredding trek takes Garland’s picture along highways littered with abandoned cars that recall his first original film script, 28 Days Later, except the monsters here are ordinary men and women not the marauding undead.
Cacophonous and breathlessly staged
DYSTOPIAN WAR MOVIE TAKES A POLITICALLY DIVIDED AMERICA TO THE EXTREME IN UNSETTLINGLY TIMELY ACTION-PACKED THRILLER
battle sequences induce the same adrenaline rush experienced by characters.
“I’ve never felt more alive,” gushes Spaeny’s novice after her terrifying first experience of gunfire.
Compelling performances spearheaded by Dunst’s emotionally numbed risk-taker feed off a lean script starved of sentimentality, which first took shape in 2020 before the televised insurrection in Washington DC perpetrated by supporters loyal to Donald Trump.
The anger coursing through America’s politically divided veins underlines the unsettling timeliness of a film like this.
■ In cinemas now
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