"Civil War" - Review

In the 3rd Term of an unnamed President's reign, his grip on the country is loosening, as rival Americans draw closer and closer to him. Jaded veteran photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and her amiable colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) are determined to get an interview and photograph of The President (Nick Offerman). Accompanying them, to Lee's reluctance, are aspiring rookie photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) who hero-worships Lee, and old-school New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who mentored Lee in the past. As they embark on a journey across a ruined America, they find and lose their humanity along the way, as they attempt to remain "objective"...

Obvious parts out of the way: the movie is political in the sense of "it's about a Civil War in America" but beyond that? It is focused not on what started the war, who the sides are, or what they believe, but simply on the effects such a war will have on the landscape and the people and the communities its participants claim to be fighting for. We get excellent glimpses of its horrors, all told through the passing views of these journalists: a man nonchalantly claiming to know the looter he is torturing from high school, and how he bets he wishes he'd spoken to him more now (petty grievances and the gleeful thrills of power in a vacuum); a small town seemingly uninterested in the war and trying not to think about it, only for Sammy to tell Lee to look up and (in a fantastic camera shot) see armed snipers on the rooftops; a standout is a sequence involving an utterly surreal showdown between a sniper and 2 of their targets at a Christmas themed golf course, where we have no idea who they are fighting for, which sides they are on and what led up to this, only that they are attempting to kill each other. The central arc is of the loss of humanity and generally HORRIBLE nature of the 2 leading journalists: we get a visceral and brutal shootout covered by the gang, and then Joel chatting amicably and joking around with the winners as they commit war crimes, all done to some "Tribe Called Quest". It's effective, brutal and jarring, especially when early on we have flashbacks of things Lee has covered and they are just as horrible. I rather appreciate the simple shot of Joel relaxing in the back of a car, surrounded by cigarette smoke, and the ruined backgrounds of a Midwestern landscape loom behind him.
The standout moment comes from a cameo by Jesse Plemons in a remarkably tense, knuckle-biting showdown, where the gang realise that their "Press" badges are not bulletproof shields... Genuinely the Plemons scene is a highlight and worth the praise I have seen it getting.
Its use of snippets of worldbuilding and the horrors being glimpsed at allow us to elaborate, and draw our own conclusions, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter who started it: this is what is happening. We follow a visceral, rapid chase to reach the drain before the regime circling around it finally collapses. The ending is bleak in the parallels it draws, and the character arcs of Lee and Joel tight, though Jessie is a tad superfluous to proceedings.
Makes a good double bill with the excellent, criminally underrated "Bushwick".