Watched Alex Garland's #CivilWar last night. Visceral,
impressive for a low budget movie. Manages to avoid politicising because the story is about the reporters. Hence the wierd Texas/California Union)
However, the portrayal of the war photographers as neutral observers merely documenting events for others to judge on, is naive. We have only to look at the distressing images from recent and current conflicts that are waved about without reference to the context.
https://thomasflight.substack.com/p/civil-war-on-the-complicated-power
On the whole the style and flow of the movie is thrilling, but suffers from poor dialogue and several scenes that seem forced in order to induce plot points, but are then rushed through without further consideration. Feels like a more experienced Director/Producer might have kept those elements tighter, allowed the story to build to a better payoff. At 1hr 49 there was plenty of runtime avalable.
I'm still trying to work out whether the still images in the movie were taken in those scenes, staged to match the action, or generated from the moving footage. Was very clever.