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The Empty Perspective of Civil War’s Final Shot
It’s the closest Alex Garland’s “anti-war” film comes to a distinct political statement.
A24’s marketing for the film has primarily hyped up its conflict, but Civil War is mostly a road-trip movie as four writers and photographers drive the 500-plus miles from New York to D.C., running into situations that test the code of objectivity to which they’re supposed to abide. And as the snipers exchange gunfire, a tense back-and-forth during which Jessie snaps away, Lee simply lays down on a patch of grass and rests her head on a clump of flowers (a reprise of an iconic Dunst moment from The Virgin Suicides). But when Lee susses out that a trio of cars speeding out from the White House is a feint — meaning the president is still inside and a photograph of him is still a possibility — she snaps to attention, striding toward the building in search of the “money shot.” It’s there that she dies, pushing an overzealous Jessie out of the way of gunfire, taking the bullets herself, and breaking all her rules against caring too much.
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