Year of Release: 2024
Director: Alex Garland
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Nick Offerman, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nelson Lee, Jefferson White, Evan Lai, Vince Pisani, Justin James Boykin
Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Writer/director Alex Garland is back, following the divisive "Men".
This time around the film takes place in the United States in a non defined timeframe, where a civil war has thrown the country into chaos. Three journalists who are in New York decide to go to Washington, D.C. in order to interview the president, including Lee Smith a war photographer, her colleague Joel, and their mentor Sammy, a gentleman of a certain age. While Lee and Joel want to be in the midst of that journalistic coup, Sammy wants to go to the frontline at Charlottesville, Virginia. They're eventually joined by a young photojournalist by the name of Jessie Cullen, who begs them to take her with them. As the group crosses the country to get to D.C., they witness communities who are trying to live their existences oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the country, but also witness horrifying situations, one of which eventually results in Sammy getting mortally wounded. As they eventually get to D.C., they witness what remains of that fight for power.
There's been many films about journalists in war conflicts, particularly during the 80s, when that genre seemed to flourish. Those films typically revisited the traumatic wars of the late 60s and 70s, such as Peter Weir's "The Year of Living Dangerously", Rolland Joffé's "The Killing Fields", Oliver Stone's "Salvador", Roger Spottiswoode's "Under Fire", to name but a few, all films that showcased the atrocities of war through the lens of those who documented it. What some of those films managed to do however, was to showcase who those reporters were, what motivated them to stay, and how the events taking place also shaped who they were as individuals/characters (you are changed by the environment in which you exist, something Francis Ford Coppola also captured in "Apocalypse Now"). Somehow of all the films written by Alex Garland, this is the one where his attention to characters is the shallowest, and the least compelling. The writer/director was able to capture and illustrate the context of the reality he has devised, but has somehow forgotten to inhabit this narrative with characters that have some depth and perspective to them. While Kirsten Dunst's Lee has some wariness of the war zone, that hardly constitutes a character trait, while Joel on the other hand is a character devoid of any substance (or meaning), the same eventually extending to Jessie. Sammy as the older and wiser character is written as the conscience of the group (a bit like Brendan Gleeson's character in "28 Days Later", another of Garland's scripts), but even he remains a bit of a cypher, with his sacrifice ultimately being a catalyst for the emotional disintegration of the group, something that is also underdeveloped. This film feels a bit like an extended episode of "The Twilight Zone", with great production values, but one that lacks the bite, insight, and character development to make it truly memorable. The cast tries their best with the characters they have, with Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinley Henderson creating the most compelling characters. The production team is phenomenal, including Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury's score, Rob Hardy's cinematography, and Caty Maxey's production design. It's a film in love with its topical theme, but undernourished in characters and relationships. Here's hoping the next one is a better endeavor for Alex Garland.
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