Director: Alex Garland

Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman

While it has its moments and boasts striking visuals, writer-director Alex Garland’s latest, an episodic wartime road movie, feels like a missed opportunity.

It’s set in a dystopian future where Florida and Texas, the ‘Western Forces’ have seceded from the rest of the US, presumably to distance themselves from the policies of Nick Offerman’s Trump-like President, who appears at the beginning of the picture rehearsing a speech to assure his followers that victory is assured.

It focuses on a disparate quartet of reporters who resolve to make their way to Washington via a war-torn America to cover the anticipated fall of the President. Hard-bitten war photographer Lee Smith (a dour Dunst) is the ostensible leader. Joel (Moura), a hot-headed journalist seemingly addicted to danger, wants to actually interview the President. Veteran New York Times journalist Sammy (McKinley Henderson) suggests to Joel that the President’s supporters may not take kindly to reporters and that he will be lynched. Making up the party is young callow photographer and Lee fangirl Jessie (Spaeny) who Sammy allows along, against Lee’s wishes.

The picture supplies some memorable images of a USA at war where refugees queue for water and guerrilla strikes are a real danger, even if visually, it feels over reliant on easy-win incongruities as various American icons are presented through the fog and grit of war. A scene at an outdoor winter wonderland in which the quartet come under fire, feels particularly heavy-handed.

The script eschews opportunities for rich allegory and timely satire - the cause of the conflict remains unexplained - in favour of a ‘Heart of Darkness’-style odyssey, and familiar dialogue exchanges about journalistic ethics from the sketchy characters. The always welcome Jesse Plemons delivers another scene-stealing cameo as psychotic, garish red sunglasses-sporting militiaman who waylays the quartet and questions them at gunpoint about their loyalties.

The final assault on Washington, captured from a ground level perspective, is rattlingly realised, but the conclusion, a moment of catharsis which quickly turns bitterly ironic, is clumsy and didactic.

Civil War is released 12th April

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm