PHOTO COURTESY A24

There is a level on which “Civil War” is quite successful. It is not, I believe, the level on which its filmmaker strove to succeed.

Alex Garland, who was Oscar nominated for his feature debut “Ex Machina” and followed it with the excellent sci-fi thriller “Annihilation,” took a big swing and missed dramatically with the 2022 parable “Men,” an overly on-the-nose nightmare of a home-invasion thriller. With “Civil War,” he again seeks to say something significant about contemporary culture, depicting a near-future United States in the throes of a devastating conflict.

The characters in “Civil War” are members of the press — veteran photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), callous reporter Joel (Wagner Moura), aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaney) and aging writer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). They’re hoping to get to Washington to interview the embattled president (Nick Offerman) before opposing forces show up to execute a violent coup.

There’s something very effective about the way Garland depicts the violence in “Civil War,” handling deafening, brutal battles with unflinching intimacy and immediacy. Unlike many science fiction and action franchises, each moment of pain is felt; every explosion shakes the viewer. He makes these sequences land; sparing a few moments of unconvincing artillery effects, “Civil War” works as a teeth-clenching war picture.

And it almost works as a vision of a slightly altered present. While Garland, who directs and wrote the script, might’ve found more of a message if he had grounded the story in reality — it’s not clear who’s on what side or what they represent — the hypothetical America here is often chilling. Garland depicts the ease with which our heavily armed and extensively disquieted populace could turn to violence, and how total that violence could become. It’s muddled, but it’s certainly memorable.

Unfortunately for Garland, I think he was mostly trying to make a movie about the role of journalism. There’s certainly a good argument to be made about the importance and dangers of truth-telling in an age of rampant falsehoods; I don’t think Garland succeeds in making it. The movements of our quartet of journalists are cliched and rife with plot contrivances; while the actors do their best, the material is thin.

This loss doesn’t sink the movie; its merits as speculative action are enough. Just don’t expect much of an argument — beyond, of course, a reminder that war is hell.

My Rating: 6/10

“Civil War” is now playing in theaters.