The Michael Knowles Show - Civil War - The Michael Knowles REVIEW

00:00:00.000 liberal hollywood makes a movie with some of its top stars in an election year about a supposedly

00:00:15.080 tyrannical presidential figure and the civil war that ensues here we go woke hollywood again

00:00:23.960 makes actually a pretty good movie

00:00:30.000 i will give you my formal proper review the number based on a scale of 20 for some reason

00:00:47.920 because my producer mr davies took common core math or something i will give you the precise

00:00:53.360 review in just a moment first though i will tell you the story i'll set the stage

00:00:59.680 there's a president he's in his third term he has attacked american citizens there's an

00:01:07.460 insurrection two groups that are insurrecting against the president there are the western

00:01:12.780 forces the wf and then there's a group out of florida as well we begin with some war journalists

00:01:21.160 kirsten dunst and a guy whose name i forget and they're taking photos they end up at at a hotel

00:01:30.600 and they hatch a plan they are going to get to washington dc to interview the president and take

00:01:38.360 his picture they are joined by their old mentor played by stephen henderson who's a great actor

00:01:45.380 he was in fences he kind of cut his teeth doing august wilson plays uh and a lot of broadway a

00:01:51.080 very very good actor and a young girl who wants to be kirsten dunst and she she wants to be a

00:01:55.240 photojournalist uh kirsten dunst already amid the battle is helping her out and you you can see the

00:02:01.660 beginning of a mentor type relationship so it was initially just going to be kirsten dunst and that

00:02:07.680 guy whose name i forget and they're going to drive to dc but then the old guy and the young girl tag

00:02:14.160 along and they set off the movie is not so much a political harangue or it's it's not even it's not

00:02:25.140 even really about any particular issue it's a road trip movie it's not even really a war movie it's a

00:02:30.880 road trip movie which are some of my favorite kinds of movies and so they're off they take off and

00:02:36.480 immediately you see in episode after episode that this war is uh spreading throughout the country

00:02:47.400 but you don't really know who's who so the kirsten dunst character becomes famous for her coverage of

00:02:54.600 the antifa massacre but what does the antifa massacre even mean is it that antifa massacred people

00:03:02.540 is it that antifa was massacred remains totally unclear presumably the president is kind of a trump

00:03:10.780 figure because the popular culture says that trump is tyrannical and blah blah blah but he doesn't

00:03:17.500 really act like trump and if if he is a trump guy then are the insurrectionists the good guys they're

00:03:26.040 kind of portrayed as the bad guys didn't the american right during the obama administration present

00:03:30.740 barack obama as a tyrant is it who's who we just don't know there are two elements of of woke in

00:03:39.640 the movie the first one is that pretty much all the bad guys are white guys pretty much kind of and

00:03:47.800 pretty much all the good guys are not white guys they're either racial minorities or women

00:03:51.840 that guy jesse plemons i think his name is who now plays just every villainous white guy middle

00:04:00.140 american character in every single show and movie he plays a really really bad guy who is just 0.99

00:04:04.960 executing civilians and who almost kills the young girl journalist and uh some other racial minority 0.98

00:04:14.580 journalists who who joined the fray that's kind of woke you know white guy bad everyone else good

00:04:19.940 the even woker element of the movie is not pro-democrat or anti-republican

00:04:26.520 the wokest element of the movie is the pretense that journalists are objective from the beginning

00:04:34.620 kirsten dunst is teaching this young photojournalist girl that in order to do their jobs they just need to

00:04:41.200 go and take the photos when they stumble on a couple of guys being tortured by white guys at a gas station

00:04:49.720 the young journalist feels an impulse to help the guys that the people being tortured and kirsten dunst

00:04:56.560 says no our job is not to help our job is not to hurt our job is not to really be involved in any way

00:05:03.580 we're just there to document from we're totally neutral observers and that of course is what the

00:05:08.520 journalists think about themselves but that's not how journalism actually works this is what we hear

00:05:14.100 from the libs all the time the journalists were the were the fourth estate we're under attack 0.71

00:05:19.240 by the conservative forces in america but we're valiantly speaking truth to power but they never

00:05:25.220 do that of course and journalists never really did that i'm not saying there's no such thing as a war

00:05:31.360 correspondent that shows some bravery of course that exists but journalism broadly does not exist just

00:05:36.880 to tell the story neutrally journalists are mouthpieces and propagandists for respected political

00:05:42.880 sides that's that's really always what it had been in american history that's why you have newspapers

00:05:47.240 like the tennessee democrat for instance and then after the second world war all the liberal journalists

00:05:52.500 just pretended to be neutral even though you'd have someone like walter cronkite you know mr objectivity

00:05:57.740 walter cronkite was a world federalist okay he was a huge lib and that's true of so many of them

00:06:02.380 so that part i i felt was woke and lib but kind of unwittingly so in a way that most people probably on both

00:06:11.700 sides of the aisle would accept now how does the movie end we'll get to that in just one second

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00:07:26.840 month puretalk.com slash knolls warning spoilers ahead they move in on washington dc the the insurrectionist

00:07:38.000 forces are there the president seems like he's fleeing but that smart journalist kirsten dunst she 0.99

00:07:44.000 knows he's still in the white house so they go in they find him there's a little creativity here in

00:07:52.060 that the white house press briefing room is just in the white house which is not true it's actually a

00:07:57.920 little separate building off to the side but they the forces make it in there they see the white house

00:08:04.220 spokesman the press secretary and she's trying to negotiate the release the insurrectionist forces

00:08:08.600 just shoot her shoot her dead and even here you're wondering okay is this is this a pro-republican

00:08:16.320 thing or a trump thing or this but it's very unclear the white house press secretary is a black woman

00:08:21.040 in the liberal uh victim hierarchy this is this is a very sympathetic character

00:08:28.960 and she is being rebuffed and interrogated by another black woman and is it and then there's a man

00:08:37.460 and there it's just it's very unclear is it who are these insurrectionists the good guy i thought

00:08:41.880 insurrectionists were the bad guys but the president had a third term and he was killing american citizens 0.50

00:08:47.280 and it's just totally totally ambiguous which side is which they make it in and they find the

00:08:55.380 president they surround him and the journalist the guy whose name i keep forgetting finally says stop

00:09:05.380 stop don't shoot stop and you're waiting here for the journalist to say it's wrong to kill the

00:09:13.160 president this is a wrong and he says before you shoot him i gotta get a quote because i drove all

00:09:20.300 the way across the country and i need to get a quote and i need to get a picture and the quote another

00:09:25.260 big spoiler here says mr president you have a quote he says don't let them shoot me don't stop them

00:09:30.340 from killing me and he says okay that'll do they shoot him he gets his picture as all this is

00:09:37.160 happening the increasingly aggressive young girl who wants to be the kirsten dunst character she's

00:09:44.480 being bolder and bolder and bolder she's taking photo after photo after photo and she's in the line

00:09:48.940 of fire for the president's forces kirsten dunst sees this she jumps in to push her out of the way 1.00

00:09:54.580 kirsten dunst gets shot herself and as she falls dying the young photographer girl snaps her picture

00:10:01.680 snaps her death which is a callback to a setup earlier on in the movie when the young girl

00:10:07.040 asks kirsten dunst if i were to be shot would you photograph my death kirsten dunst says what do you

00:10:13.600 think implying that the job is just about documenting you got to kill your feelings you have to kill your 0.70

00:10:21.160 desires you are just there to observe and to snap that camera all other desires have to go out the

00:10:31.300 window and so you get this lovely callback and inversion of that by the end of the movie that

00:10:37.820 part does not really speak so well of journalists necessarily it it plays into the mythology of

00:10:43.200 journalism but it also portrays the journalists as psychopaths who are just power hungry extremely

00:10:51.100 ambitious and and trying to get clicks you know trying to create the kind of content that will

00:10:58.260 attract a lot of attention they would say perhaps they're doing it for historical purposes to get

00:11:05.460 the truth out there a more cynical viewer would say you know you're doing it just so that you get more

00:11:11.660 eyeballs on your pictures that's a big question here that the journalists are supposed to be totally

00:11:18.140 focused on the truth the truth above all things we see in the real world today despite what they may say

00:11:25.620 journalists increasingly mocking the idea of the truth just this week just as the movie is coming

00:11:31.360 out you have the new ceo of npr mocking the very notion of truth and saying you know we don't we don't

00:11:37.320 want to be guided just by the truth everyone has their own truths man you know we want to be guided by

00:11:42.780 something other than the truth which of course is is true in the real life of journalism they kill the

00:11:49.860 president and then it ends with pictures of these insurrectionists standing around the president's

00:11:56.380 dead body the movie overall pretty good because of that nobody's totally a hero kirsten dunst is

00:12:08.320 probably the closest to it nobody's totally the villain it's it's not a political harangue in any way

00:12:14.880 it's just kind of a fun thriller the acting is excellent stephen henderson who plays the old guy

00:12:21.360 is really an excellent character actor they were all pretty good even the young girl who's not quite

00:12:26.640 as seasoned as the other ones she turns in a pretty good performance too it's all good it's actually

00:12:31.040 oddly enough at the time that we're all complaining about how hollywood is too woke and beating us over

00:12:37.780 the head with its politics this movie which is on the surface extremely political is a breath of fresh

00:12:44.760 because it's just kind of a fun thriller so on the scale of lame to epic pure movie making zero being

00:12:52.880 lame 10 being epic i'd give it a seven seven or eight maybe even a i mean you know what i'm feeling

00:13:02.140 generous today let's give it an eight let's give it a seven and a half seven and a half am i allowed to

00:13:08.080 do halves i don't care it's my show i'll do i'll do halves then on the scale of woke to trad zero being

00:13:16.380 woke 10 being trad

00:13:17.740 four it's it's almost totally neutral it's too nice to journalists that's the really the only problem

00:13:27.260 and it's a little tough on white guys so but four and a half a four and a half so what does that give

00:13:33.080 me four and a half plus seven and a half here are the four out of three that's what about 12

00:13:42.040 12 out of 20

00:13:46.100 pretty good now this stupid scale that my producer mr davies came up with is really counterintuitive

00:13:54.900 anything 10 and over is watchable it's actually that's a pretty good score i would recommend it

00:14:03.040 because it is addressing oppressing anxiety people on both sides of the aisle really do feel like

00:14:10.280 the country is coming apart and they're right about that the country actually is coming apart

00:14:14.660 and the civil society is fraying this was a way to deal with that that doesn't exacerbate the problem

00:14:21.500 had hollywood come out with a civil war movie that that were totally one-sided and said you know

00:14:28.040 republicans are tearing the country apart and trump is a threat to democracy or whatever nonsense they

00:14:31.560 always say that would have been pretty bad no matter how good the movie was but that's not what

00:14:38.200 they did they they're tapping into a cultural anxiety dealing with it in a way that leaves a lot of the

00:14:46.700 interpretation up to the audience and ultimately discouraging civil war there are some people who

00:14:53.040 are really gung-ho for civil war on the left and on the right i'm not because if there were to be a

00:14:57.640 civil war that would entail me i don't know like shooting my cousins or something right i call me

00:15:02.440 a wallflower but that doesn't really interest me and kirsten dunst has a line in the movie she says i

00:15:07.320 covered these wars overseas and i thought the the one bit of activism that could come out of it is just

00:15:13.580 by showing the story it would warn people not to do this here but here we are another recurring theme

00:15:20.820 that their relatives they're just on the farm somewhere they're just pretending this isn't happening

00:15:25.320 they actually walk into a town that's just pretending that it's not occupied that the war

00:15:29.060 that the civil society hasn't unraveled there's a shop owner just saying yeah try to ignore it i try

00:15:34.180 not to watch the news too much and it's it's very unclear if this war reporting is doing anything i mean

00:15:40.020 they get to the end there the the mentors died trying to save them uh he he ends up getting shot and

00:15:45.860 they say he gave his life for nothing because they're taking all these pictures but who's even looking at

00:15:51.220 them most of the people that we encounter in the movie they're not even paying attention to the news

00:15:55.940 so it's just it oddly enough for a just kind of silly summer thriller it it touches on these social

00:16:04.700 questions with a great deal of sophistication that's a that's a good movie and then they get the guy from

00:16:11.020 parks and rec to be the president nick offerman kind of a funny little little cameo performance

00:16:16.460 i know i wanted i went in expecting to hate it it had all the ingredients to be absolutely odious

00:16:24.120 what can i say was pretty good you should probably go see it

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The Michael Knowles Show - April 20, 2024

Civil War - The Michael Knowles REVIEW

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