Putting Civil War on the special shelf with Half-Life 1 for media you can enjoy when you want to see the troops get THEIR GEESE COOKED by enterprising American citizens.

Anyway this was way better than I expected. I’m a big fan of Kirsten Dunst and she put on a fantastic performance, as did Wagner Moura. I found Cailee Spaeny kind of annoying but her character was necessary to the plot and to Lee’s arc. There were some profoundly dumb lines (“You took that motherfucking legendary photo of the Antifa Massacre”) and nonsensical political elements that aren't so much things I disagree with as things that just don’t really make sense with how the battle lines would be drawn if this country broke down in such a way. It doesn’t affect the substance of the story, though.

The action was phenomenal, just incredible intensity and impact. I haven’t gotten an actual adrenaline rush from watching an action scene in a very long time but this movie gave me the jitters a couple of times. It’s very realistic (or it seems realistic to a layperson like me which is good enough!) and you can tell they tried to make it look as close to actual combat as possible— it reminded me of way back in 2014 when I would watch footage from Donbas separatists. Check this one out for sure even if you thought the trailer looked lame.