Non-American filmmakers tend to produce the most unflinching movies about American sociopolitical horror. 12 Years a Slave, from British filmmaker Steve McQueen, is a powerful example that confronts America’s great shame with startling sobriety; as is Canadian director Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, a gritty, though stunningly-mounted, look at American law enforcement on the Southern border. Even Nomadland, from Chinese-born auteur Chloé Zhao, provided one of the better modern-day examples of American economic unraveling in the gig economy era. With Civil War, English writer-director Alex Garland tries to enter the conversation to mixed results. His film is at once a potent reckoning with the United States’ overheated national temperature that measures tense war movie thrills with the artistry of an A24 film, but with an oddly apolitical shape. His film, more a tribute to the bravado of war journalists than an actual attempt to remark on contemporary American division, seems to lack any discerning political leaning or astute observation to justify its American setting beyond showcasing how truly horrifying a civil war unfolding on home turf would be.
