WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Opening this week, hopefully only in the movies...

Civil War--Such a conflict has broken out in the contemporary United States. Fighting seems largely confined, so far, to the northeast, between the government and the "Western Forces," a confederation between Texas and California (!), though there also seem to be guerilla fighters around, and I couldn't always tell which side, if either, they were supposed to support.

We're told that in places like Missouri and Colorado people are still "pretending this isn't happening." But the country between New York and D.C. is lawless and shattered and bloody, with refugee camps and burning buildings and mass graves and bodies hanging in car washes or from overpasses. Canadian cash is needed if you want to buy gas.

The focus of writer-director Alex Garland's gruesome road movie is on four Reuters journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson) trying to make their way south down back roads, in a van marked "PRESS," from New York to D.C. They're hoping to interview the three-term President (Nick Offerman) before the capitol falls to the Western Forces.

If some of these alliances sound improbable or confusing to you in the context of our current real-life partisan divide, all I can say is that they did to me, too. Garland seems to quite deliberately make the ideologies behind his clashing forces vague, and both sides are shown to be equally ruthless; no quarter is granted in this combat, no prisoners taken.

The movie grips, evoking a potent sense of a nightmare that many of us fear. But it's also unsatisfying, even maddening. In the movie's best, most terrifyingly believable scene, for instance, our heroes are at the non-mercy of a murderous soldier (Jesse Plemons) who articulates an overtly racist, nationalist vision of America. But again, we aren't sure which side this guy is on, or even if he's officially on either side.

What I hope is that Garland's insistent, evasive non-partisanship isn't the result of commercial timidity; of a wish for the movie to play equally well in Red and Blue markets alike. Even more so, I hope that it isn't a result of sincere ideological false equivalence. Rising above partisanship is a laudable goal, certainly, and few reasonable observers would suggest that decent people on both sides don't have legitimate grievances, even if they're often directed at the wrong targets. But the idea that both sides are somehow morally equal is indefensible.

In the absence of conviction about what's at stake in the outcome of this conflict, Civil War takes shape as an earnest journalism drama. Dunst is effectively haunted as the disillusioned photographer; Spaeny, who looks like she should be home studying for a 9th-grade algebra test, is the newbie who Dunst doesn't think belongs on this treacherous trip. Moura is the febrile, adrenalin-stoked reporter and Henderson is the wise old veteran correspondent. About all we're left to invest in is that old-school newshound standard--will they get the big story?

Unless, of course, another investment is possible. It's hard to shake the question of to what degree this movie may be aimed at that part of the audience that thinks this sort of anarchy would be cool. One sometimes has this sense with the zombie movies--a feeling that part of the appeal is that of shooting people in the head with impunity--and the Mad Max style postapocalyptic actioners.

Intentionally or not, Civil War carries a queasy whiff of this same twisted wishful thinking. But in this case, the fantasy is sickeningly attainable.