Cert - 15, Run-time - 1 hour 49 minutes, Director - Alex Garland

With a civil war unfolding across America, four journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson) travel to Washington DC, where journalists are banned, to question the President (Nick Offerman). Writer-director Alex Garland has said that with Civil War he set out to make an uncontextualised, apolitical film. For the most part, he and his cast and crew succeed in this. However, it's also what holds the film back on several occasions, lessening the tension that could be experienced in certain scenes due to a lack of knowledge as to what's happening in the war depicted, and how it started. As we see a group of journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson) and the young hopeful who joins them (Cailee Spaeny) encounter various characters and locations with different responses to the war the main response is interest. Suspense is present in the segmented journey, but not as much as there perhaps could be as the group makes their way from New York to Washington DC - which journalists are forbidden from entering - to question the President (Nick Offerman), now on his third term, about the war. Yet, a believable nature is created thanks to both the threats which are experienced and how Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy capture them. You could stop the film on any frame and it would look like one of the pictures which we see the central war photographers taking throughout. The style isn't like a documentary, but certainly throws you upfront to directly observe the proceedings. Nowhere is this more effective than in a key action sequence in the third act. We've seen the White House surrounded by towering protective walls and chaos is now unfolding outside of them. A barrage of sound and explosions fills the screen and speakers already part way through the seamless flow of the final 15-20 minutes. It's here where we see some of the biggest vulnerabilities from the already-tested characters. None more so than from Kirsten Dunst who has played an almost dead-pan yet emotionally fraught performance until this point - one which brilliantly packs all the detail into her eyes. The rest of the cast helps to push a recognisable nature in most scenes along the way, particularly with the lack of context to the events at hand, helping to build up the engagement as Washington grows closer - and the fear of being shot on sight rises. The immediate threat is often where the tension arises in each sequence throughout the film instead of what we're building towards, although there's plenty once events finally begin to pan out in the goal location where the scale is truly ramped up. The recognisable nature of some Civil War's scenes helps bring believability to the way the effectively-captured events pan out. The tension may not have full room to grow, but it's certainly present, and there's a lot of interest to be found in the proceedings witnessed by the characters, particularly a brilliant Kirsten Dunst.

Jamie Skinner, Four stars