Friday new releases: 12 April 2024

Civil War, Late Night with the Devil and The Tiger's Apprentice are in cinemas, Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in Two Pieces is streaming on AppleTV+

My personal interest in the world of war corresponding and photojournalism came about thanks to the late Austrian pop star Falco who wrote – along with the Bolland brothers who masterminded his work – a song in 1985 called “Kamikaze Capa”, about the photographer who died in Indochina in 1954.

Robert Capa famously (and pseudonymously) said, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough” and that’s the motto of Kirsten Dunst’s character, Lee Smith, in Alex Garland’s Civil War. She’s a legend of the biz and tyro snapper Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) attaches herself to her hoping some of the magic will rub off. Smith, and her wordsmith partner Joel (Wagner Moura), have a plan to head to Washington D.C. where the regime of an embattled president (Nick Offerman) looks to be on its last legs.

Secessionist states, led by California and Texas, are closing in and this might be the last chance to interview the man, it is implied, who has caused all this destruction.

Also on the road trip is veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), reluctantly engaging with what he is certain will be a suicide mission across the frontline to visit a White House that has no love for a free press.

Civil War is an enjoyable, well-made and often spectacular film that crumbles on closer examination.

The most interesting thing about it for an audience is the situation and the expert visual construction of it. But that’s the aspect of the film that Garland is least interested in.

He’s not terribly bothered about the sides, the grievances, the right or the wrong, or how it might be that the United States could get there from here. On the road, you can’t really tell the two sides apart, which I suppose is a part of Garland’s thesis. But really, the war is just a semi-plausible situation in which to drop his protagonists and to do some digital disaster porn.

He is concerned about what makes people want to chase wars, like the researchers in Twister chased storms. All four clearly have their different reasons for being in that car, on that dangerous journey, but then Garland fails to do anything insightful with them.

Are these war correspondents heroes for putting their lives on the line? Not especially. There are no self-important speeches about ‘the public’s right to know’.

Where these words and pictures will end up is never even mentioned. There may not be any traditional media left, for all we know. Young Jessie is even shooting her photos on analogue film, like a vinyl-loving hipster.

They’re not there for the public, they are there for themselves.

And the conclusion, when we arrive at it, feels like it has been contrived as the reason the film exists and that Garland has worked backwards from it, rather than something that happens organically from the characters he has created.

Still, you won’t see many better action set-pieces this year and there’s a gripping scene where (an uncredited) Jesse Plemons threatens to run away with the whole film.

It has been a good couple of years to be Australian brothers who make low budget horror films. Adelaide’s Philippou Brothers wowed everyone with Talk to Me last year and now we have Victoria’s Cameron and Colin Cairnes and their tour de force Late Night with the Devil.