I'm a big fan of Garland's earlier films (Ex Machina, Annihilation) and wanted to like this, but sadly this one was a miss. There's not really a story - no reason why the war is happening or what is at stake. The characters are extremely unrelatable and are more there just to represent concepts (the media, racism, etc) rather than have any identity of their own. The war just happens to be there in the background while the characters are taking a roadtrip through rural America, which doesn't actually show any war going on, just random series of fights which could just be regular gun violence from today. You would hardly know there's a war going on except the characters telling you there is.
It's not until the last 10 minutes that you see any military operations and it lacks scale for only seemingly having about 100 troops fighting, given what's supposedly at stake. The movie should've started here and gone backwards into why the war is happening, which would've made a more interesting film in my opinion.
It's not until the last 10 minutes that you see any military operations and it lacks scale for only seemingly having about 100 troops fighting, given what's supposedly at stake. The movie should've started here and gone backwards into why the war is happening, which would've made a more interesting film in my opinion.