By Peter Keough

In this dreamworld, the politics don’t matter. It’s the artfully gruesome spectacle that counts — that and the hackneyed Hollywood storyline about the hardened veteran mentoring the neophyte through an initiation into the harsh realities of the profession.

Civil War. Directed by Alex Garland. Opens April 12 at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Seaport, the AMC Boston Common 19, the AMC Causeway 13, the Kendall Square Cinema, and the suburbs.

A somnolent Kirsten Dunst in Civil War. Photo: A24

Not long into Alex Garland’s exploitative, inane, and flaccid Civil War it occurred to me that as determined and reckless as the journalists in the film are to snap pictures of lurid atrocities, they aren’t especially interested in getting their pictures or stories out to the public. True, they complain about spotty Wi-Fi. One of them makes a point of using an analog camera with film. But it’s as if just the act of taking the pictures was the point — the pornographic, voyeuristic, adrenaline rush of it all. In contrast, think of the AP crew in 20 Days in Mariupol who risked their lives seeking places with a signal from which they could send their reports and images in order to expose the crimes they had witnessed to the world. Here moral/civic responsibility doesn’t really matter; these reporters are no more than thrill seekers, as is the director of Civil War, feeding an audience’s morbid desire for carnage, disruption, and prettily composed nihilism.

How odd that the inciting force in this rancid road story is about getting a scoop: the last interview with the embattled President (Nick Offerman, from Parks and Recreation to the Oval Office and so little to show for it). The Prez is hunkered down in DC as rebel forces close in on him. Hotshot photojournalist Lee (a somnolent Kirsten Dunst) and her sidekick Joel (a hammy Wagner Moura) have cooked up this plan, apparently because they find the bloody unrest in New York City, where they are holed up in a journalist-infested hotel, too tame.

Tagging along with them is old-timer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Harrison, the film’s one stab at gravitas and a lot of good it does him) and Lee-wannabe Jessie (coltish and forgettable Cailee Spaeny of Priscilla fame). Back in time, Lee had rescued Jessie from a suicide bomber attack (by whom? against whom?) and she has glommed onto her idol in a relationship that comes off as an uneasy mix of The Devil Wears Prada and All About Eve.

The bits of backstory to this unlikely conflict are meted out in downtime bull sessions encrusted with awkward exposition. The President, it seems, is serving an unconstitutional third term, has eliminated the FBI, and has been blasting pesty civilians with air strikes. (He might plausibly be a Trump surrogate, especially because Offerman in extremis looks a little like Steve Bannon, or maybe a right-wing wet dream of a demonic Biden.) Rebel factions have taken the authoritarian on, most prominently the Western Forces, a ridiculous alliance between California and Texas. This is puerile both-sides-ism at its worst: Garland clearly is trying to placate the libs and the MAGA crowd with such an unholy union. At any rate, the President’s days seem numbered. Sammy compares the would-be tyrant to such other failed strong men as Mussolini, Ceaușescu, and Gaddafi.

But how did this come about, you might ask. In what conceivable version of the US today could such a clown show evolve? To be fair, 10 years ago who could have predicted what a nightmare the 2024 election is turning out to be. But Garland isn’t even trying to connect his banal fantasy to real life. The film’s press notes blandly dismiss such prosaic concerns, claiming that the movie is “a Rorschach test of America, left for viewers to wrestle with on their own.” Or as Lee puts it to her protégé Jessie, “Once you start asking these questions you don’t stop and that’s why you don’t ask them.” So much for the 5Ws and an H.

So off they go to DC as in a latter-day Wizard of Oz. In lieu of a Yellow Brick Road they maneuver highways clogged with scorched wrecks, like outtakes from The Day After (1983). They scamper past one military disaster after another, their looks of horror overshadowed by leers of war-porn voyeuristic bliss. A showdown between snipers takes place in the “surreal” surroundings of a Christmas village with bullet-riddled Santas and carols playing on the sound system. Hunkered down with one of the combat teams, they are called “retarded” when they ask the gunmen (frivolously frilled with nail polish and Day-Glo-dyed hair) what side they are fighting for. At another stop they barter $300 in Canadian money in order to fill up at a gas station. Meanwhile, Jessie wanders off to where two tortured prisoners are strung up in a shed in the back. Lee gives a lesson in their craft by instructing her to take their picture.

In this dreamworld, the politics don’t matter. It’s the artfully gruesome spectacle that counts — that and the hackneyed Hollywood storyline about the hardened veteran mentoring the neophyte through an initiation into the harsh realities of the profession. On one occasion it looks as if the film might actually confront some of the malignant ideology that could spawn such a conflict. The crew of journalists happen upon soldiers, possibly from the official government (but who’s keeping track at this point), filling a mass grave with dead civilians. The soldier in charge (a perfunctorily creepy Jesse Plemons) asks them what kind of Americans they are, and [spoiler] he approves of those who hail from such all-American places as Missouri and Colorado.

But whatever point might be gleaned from this tense confrontation is lost when a grossed-out Jessie ends up submerged in a pile of corpses, an immersion which sadly serves as a metaphor for the film as a whole. Ironically, this scene doesn’t shock or even titillate: its fakery exploits to the point of diminishing the horror of genuine images of violence coming from Ukraine, Gaza, and so many other war zones around the world.

Meanwhile, still seeking that “big” scoop that ostensibly initiated this tour, our protagonists arrive in DC in time for the final, fatuous assault on the seat of government, an ineptly orchestrated cinematic farrago that makes White House Down (2013) look like The Battle of Algiers (1966). Embedded with the surprisingly accommodating forces of the Western Forces, the journalists evoke Francis Coppola’s cameo in Apocalypse Now (1979). They dodge and weave between firefights blasting marbled tourist attractions and pockets of pro-administration resistance. But it all comes down to nada; there’s no resolution of themes or clarity of purpose, just a climax filled with the trite tropes of the film’s clichéd characters.

A scene that underlines the intent of Civil War takes place about midway through, when the journalists pass through a placid town that appears to be an oasis of normality given the chaos consuming the nation. As they browse in a boutique, Joel asks the blasé woman at the register if she’s aware that a civil war is going on. The woman responds that she does, but prefers not to get involved. The same can be said for Garland who, choosing to ignore gruesome realities, has created a boutique catastrophe, filled with garish goods consumers can safely sample.

Peter Keough writes about film and other topics and has contributed to numerous publications. He had been the film editor of the Boston Phoenix from 1989 to its demise in 2013 and has edited three books on film, most recently For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).