Jarring, visceral and all too plausible, Alex Garland's Civil War is a must-see

In his filmmaking career, Alex Garland has terrified us with zombies, infectious alien hybrids, murderous men and A.I. run amuck. Civil War, the writer and director's latest film, is not only his most ambitious entry but also his most plausible.

The press notes for Civil War describe the setting as "near-future America," but it feels like it could be tomorrow.

This is not a struggle set in some far-flung country. It's happening in America. In the parking lot of a blackened JCPenney. On the streets of the capital, which are riddled with bullets and barricades.  

Garland sets the tone early as we meet Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a combat photographer surprised to be covering a war at home. 

With Nick Offerman as the U.S. President in his third term, the country has disintegrated into factions — the Florida Alliance joining forces with the Western Alliance (Texas and California), all pushing toward the White House. 

While the very idea of blue-state Californians and red-state Texans working together may seem like science fiction, Civil War imagines a scenario where a president refuses to leave office, presumably forcing the states to work past their political differences. 

Squint and eagle eyes may catch a map, just a mere reflection from a TV, showing the states that seceded. The lack of clarity around the war's origins is a feature, not a bug.

Garland is far less interested in some poli-sci thought experiment than he is in exploring what war feels like, sounds like. (See this one on the biggest, loudest screen you can find.) 

It's those jarring images — the UN relief camp in the abandoned stadium and the thundering thrum of helicopters hovering over the capital — that give this near-future scenario a present-tense feeling. 

Ask Garland how difficult it was to find these scenes of decay and dereliction and his answer is, "Not very hard at all." The abandoned football stadium and the graffiti is still there. All they did was add the tents.

Speaking with CBC News, Garland says, "The West can look so wealthy … but the wealth is concentrated.There are areas of really extreme poverty in America."

In the gaps between the haves and the have-nots, polarization flourishes. Civil War explores what happens when the common fabric that unites a country shreds.

Garland's father was a political cartoonist and he grew up with journalists and foreign correspondents as close friends of his family. So for the director, journalism is the inoculation against creeping disintegration. 

No surprise then that what propels the story forward is Lee and the group of reporters she joins up with. Wagner Moura (whom you may recognize from Narcos) is excellent as the seemingly gung-ho print journalist Joel.