Review: Civil War (dir. by Alex Garland)

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Arleigh

“What kind of American are you?” — Unnamed ultranationalist militant

Alex Garland’s Civil War is the kind of movie that feels both uncomfortably close to reality and strangely abstract at the same time, like a nightmare built out of today’s headlines but deliberately smudged at the edges. It plays less like a political thesis and more like a road movie through a country that has already gone past the point of no return, seen through the eyes of people whose job is to look at horror and keep pressing the shutter anyway.

Garland frames the story around war journalists traveling from New York to Washington, D.C., hoping to reach the President before rebel forces do, and that simple premise gives the film a clear spine even when the politics around it stay fuzzy. Kirsten Dunst’s Lee, a veteran photographer, and Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie, a young aspiring shooter, are paired with Wagner Moura’s adrenaline-chasing reporter Joel and Stephen McKinley Henderson’s weary old-timer Sammy, forming a sort of dysfunctional road-trip family driving straight into hell. The setup is classic “last assignment” territory, but the context—an America shattered by an authoritarian third-term president and secessionist forces from places like Texas and California—is what makes the film play like speculative non-fiction rather than pure sci-fi. That Texas-California alliance as the Western Forces stands out as such strange bedfellows, two states about as diametrically opposed as you can get politically and culturally, which subtly hints at just how monstrous the president must be to drive them into the same camp against a common enemy.

The plot itself is pretty straightforward once you strip away the political expectations people bring in. The group moves from one pocket of chaos to another, crossing a patchwork United States where some areas still look almost normal while others are full-on war zones. The tension ramps as they get closer to Charlottesville and then D.C., eventually embedding with Western Forces as they push toward the capital. Along the way, the journalists encounter a series of vignettes—mass graves, roadside militias, bombed-out towns—that feel intentionally episodic, like flipping through the front page of a dozen different conflicts and realizing they all share the same language of fear and dehumanization.

Performance-wise, Dunst is the emotional anchor, playing Lee with a kind of hollowed-out professionalism that feels earned rather than performative. Her character is someone who has seen too many wars abroad and now finds herself documenting one at home, and Dunst sells that numbness without turning Lee into a complete emotional void. Spaeny’s Jessie, meanwhile, is the mirror opposite: all raw nerves and hungry ambition, constantly pushing closer to danger for the shot, until that drive becomes its own kind of addiction. Their dynamic—mentor vs. rookie, caution vs. thrill—gives the movie a human arc to track even when the bigger national stakes remain frustratingly vague.

The supporting cast makes the most of their moments. Moura brings a reckless charm to Joel, someone who clearly gets off on the chaos even as he understands the risks, while Henderson’s Sammy has that lived-in, old-school journalist vibe that makes his presence feel instantly comforting. Nick Offerman’s president shows up mostly as an image and a voice—an isolated leader giving delusional addresses about “victories” and “loyalty” while the country burns—which fits Garland’s choice to keep power distant and almost abstract. And then there’s Jesse Plemons in a late, unnerving scene as a soldier interrogating the group with the question “What kind of American are you?”, a moment that pulls the film’s subtext about nationalism and dehumanization right up to the surface.

Visually, Civil War is stunning and deeply unpleasant in the way it should be. Garland and his team lean heavily into realism: grounded battle scenes, chaotic firefights, and that disorienting sense of being in the middle of something huge and unknowable, with the camera clinging to the journalists as they scramble for cover or line up a shot. The film often uses shallow depth of field, throwing backgrounds into blur so explosions and tracers feel like ghostly streaks behind the tight focus on a face or a camera lens, which reinforces how narrow the characters’ survival focus has become. Sound design is equally aggressive—gunfire, drones, and explosions hit hard in a theater, and Garland doesn’t shy away from making violence both terrifying and, in a way, disturbingly exhilarating.

That’s one of the film’s more interesting, and arguably more uncomfortable, tensions: it’s overtly anti-war in its messaging, but it also understands that war, on a visceral level, can feel like a rush. Several characters clearly chase that feeling, and the film doesn’t let them—or the audience—off the hook for enjoying the adrenaline that comes from life-or-death stakes. There are moments where the action almost tips into “too cool” territory, but Garland usually undercuts this with the emotional fallout afterward, making it clear the cost of those images and thrills is paid in trauma and numbness.

Where Civil War is really going to divide people is in its politics—or more accurately, its refusal to spell them out. The film never fully explains how this United States got here or exactly what the sides are fighting over, beyond hints of authoritarian overreach and regional alliances like the Texas-California Western Forces. You get breadcrumbs: a third-term president who dissolved norms, references to an “Antifa massacre,” and presidential rhetoric that echoes real-world strongman language, but Garland refuses to plant a big obvious flag that says, “This is about X side being right or wrong.”

Depending on what you want from the movie, that choice either feels smartly universal or frustratingly evasive. On one hand, treating the conflict like a kind of Rorschach test lets viewers project their own anxieties onto the screen; it becomes a story about any country pushed too far by polarization, propaganda, and the normalization of violence. On the other, the vagueness around ideologies can come across as sidestepping tough specifics, especially in today’s charged climate, where audiences might crave a bolder stance on division and power.

To the film’s credit, its focus is very clearly on the experience of war, not the policy debates that preceded it. The journalists are not neutral robots; they have opinions, fears, and moments of moral conflict, but their professional instinct is to document first, analyze later, and that’s the lens the film adopts as well. You see how the job warps them: Lee’s exhaustion, Jessie’s desensitization, Joel’s thrill-seeking, Sammy’s weary sense of duty. In that sense, Civil War feels as much like an ode and a critique of war journalism as it does a warning about domestic collapse.

That said, the character work will not land equally for everyone. The emphasis on spectacle and raw incident sometimes leaves less room for layered personal depth, with figures beyond the leads feeling more archetypal than fully fleshed out. Even Lee and Jessie are shaped primarily by their roles in the chaos rather than extensive personal histories, which suits Garland’s lean, immersive style but might leave some wanting more nuance.

The last act, set during the assault on Washington and the White House, is where the film fully commits to being a war movie rather than a political allegory. The battle is staged with a mix of big, chaotic action and small, intimate beats: journalists diving behind columns, soldiers shouting directions, Jessie pushing closer to get the shot even as bullets hit inches away. It’s brutal and propulsive, driving home the film’s bleak thesis: once violence is normalized, legitimacy and process vanish, replaced by whoever has the most guns in the room.

Is Civil War perfect? No. It is at times overdetermined in its imagery and underdetermined in its world-building, and the decision to keep the “why” of the war so foggy will absolutely alienate viewers who wanted a sharper, more pointed statement about the current American moment. But it is also undeniably gripping, technically impressive, and thematically rich enough to spark real conversation about violence, media, and how far a society can bend before it breaks. As a piece of speculative near-future filmmaking, it lands somewhere between warning and reflection: not saying “this will happen,” but asking whether a country this polarized and numb to cruelty should be so confident that it won’t.

Review: The Running Man (dir. by Edgar Wright)

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Arleigh

“Bloodlust is our birthright!” — Bobby Thompson

Edgar Wright’s 2025 take on The Running Man is an adrenaline shot to the chest and a sly riff on our era’s obsession with dystopian game shows, all filtered through his own eye for spectacle and pacing. Unlike many of his earlier works, such as Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which bristle with meta-commentary, the film is a sleeker and more bruising affair. At its core, this is a survival thriller decked out in neon, driven by a director who wants to both honor and outpace what’s come before.

Wright’s version ditches the muscle-bound caricature of the 1987 Schwarzenegger adaptation, recentering on a more grounded protagonist. Glen Powell’s Ben Richards isn’t a quip-dispensing tank; he’s a desperate father, pressed to extremes, haunted more by anxiety than rage. We meet him in a world where reality TV devours everything, and nothing is too cruel if it wins the ratings war. Richards is cast as the sacrificial everyman, volunteering for the deadly Running Man show only because his family’s survival is at stake, not his ego. This lends the film a more human—and frankly, more believable—edge than either of its predecessors.

Visually, The Running Man is vintage Wright: kinetic and muscular, with chase scenes propelled by propulsive synths and punchy editing, each set piece designed as much to thrill as to disorient. Gone, however, is much of the director’s comedic ribbing; what remains is a tense visual feast, saturated in electric colors and relentless motion. The camera rarely settles. The television show itself is depicted as both garish and sinister, a spectacle that feels plausible because it’s only five minutes into our own future.

The film takes sharp aim at the machinery of television and the spectacle it creates, exposing how entertainment can thrive on cruelty and manipulation. It highlights a world where reality is heavily curated and shaped to serve ratings and control, with the audience complicit in consuming and encouraging the degradation of genuine human experience. The media in the film mirrors warnings that have circulated in recent years—that it has become a tool designed to appease the masses, even going so far as to use deepfakes to manipulate narratives in favor of particular agendas. While this focus on broadcast media delivers potent social commentary, Wright does drop the ball a bit by concentrating too much on traditional TV media at a time when entertainment consumption is largely online and more fragmented. This narrower scope misses an opportunity to deeply engage with the digital age’s sprawling and insidious impact on public attention and truth.

Glen Powell’s performance is pivotal to the film’s success. He anchors the story, selling both the exhaustion and the resolve required for the role. This Ben Richards is no superhero—his fear feels palpable, and his reactions are messy, urgent, and often impulsive. Opposite him, Josh Brolin steps in as Dan Killian, the show’s orchestrator. Brolin’s performance, smooth and menacing, turns every negotiation and threat into a master class in corporate evil. The stalkers, the show’s gladiatorial killers, are less cartoon than their 1987 counterparts, but all the more chilling for their believability—branding themselves like influencers, they embody a world where violence and popularity are inseparable.

On the surface, Wright’s Running Man leans heavily into social satire. It lobs grenades at infotainment, the exploitation inherent in reality TV, and the way audiences are silently implicated in all the carnage they consume. Reality is a construct, truth is whatever the network decides to show, and every moment of suffering is a data point in an endless quest for engagement. The critique is loud, though not always nuanced. Where Wright has previously reveled in self-aware storytelling, here he pulls back, focusing on the mechanics and cost of spectacle more than its digital afterlife.

Action is where the film hits hardest. Wright brings his expected flair for movement and tension, with chase sequences escalating to wild, blood-smeared crescendos, and hand-to-hand fights that feel tactile rather than stylized. The film borrows more heavily from the structure of King’s novel, raising stakes with each new adversary and refusing to let viewers catch their breath. Despite the non-stop pace, the movie runs a little too long—some sequences feel indulgent, and the final act’s rhythm stutters as it builds toward its conclusion. Still, even in its bloat, there’s always something energetic or visually inventive happening onscreen.

The movie’s climax and resolution avoid over-explaining or revealing too much, instead choosing to leave room for interpretation and suspense about the outcomes for the characters and the world they inhabit. This restraint preserves the tension and leaves viewers with something to chew on beyond the final credits.

For fans of Edgar Wright, there’s a sense of something both familiar and altered here. The visual wit, the muscular editing, the stylish sound cues—they’re all present. Yet the film feels less like a playground for Wright’s usual whimsy and more like a taut, collaborative blockbuster. It’s playfully brutal and thoroughly engaging, but does not, in the end, subvert the genre quite as gleefully as some might hope. For every moment of subtext or clever visual flourish, there is another in which the movie simply barrels forward, content to dazzle and provoke in equal measure.

The Running Man (2025) is a film with a target audience—those who want action, smart but accessible social commentary, and just enough character work to feel the stakes. It will delight viewers drawn to a flashier, meaner take on dystopian spectacle, and Powell’s central performance is likely to win over skeptics and fans alike. If you’re hoping for a thesis on algorithmic age or a meditation on surveillance capitalism, you may need to look elsewhere. But if you want a turbo-charged chase movie that occasionally stops to wag a finger at the world that spawned it, you’re likely to have a great time.

Ultimately, Edgar Wright’s Running Man is a sharp, glossy refit of a classic dystopian story, packed with high-octane action and grounded by its central performance. It won’t please everyone and doesn’t attempt to, but it never forgets that, above all, good television keeps us running. In the era of spectacle, that might be all you need.