Civil War - The Michael Knowles REVIEW
Episode Stats
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Summary
Woke Hollywood makes a movie with some of its top stars in an election year about a supposedly tyrannical presidential figure and the civil war that ensues. Here we go, Woke Hollywood again makes actually a pretty good movie.
Transcript
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liberal hollywood makes a movie with some of its top stars in an election year about a supposedly
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tyrannical presidential figure and the civil war that ensues here we go woke hollywood again
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i will give you my formal proper review the number based on a scale of 20 for some reason
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because my producer mr davies took common core math or something i will give you the precise
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review in just a moment first though i will tell you the story i'll set the stage
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there's a president he's in his third term he has attacked american citizens there's an
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insurrection two groups that are insurrecting against the president there are the western
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forces the wf and then there's a group out of florida as well we begin with some war journalists
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kirsten dunst and a guy whose name i forget and they're taking photos they end up at at a hotel
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and they hatch a plan they are going to get to washington dc to interview the president and take
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his picture they are joined by their old mentor played by stephen henderson who's a great actor
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he was in fences he kind of cut his teeth doing august wilson plays uh and a lot of broadway a
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very very good actor and a young girl who wants to be kirsten dunst and she she wants to be a
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photojournalist uh kirsten dunst already amid the battle is helping her out and you you can see the
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beginning of a mentor type relationship so it was initially just going to be kirsten dunst and that
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guy whose name i forget and they're going to drive to dc but then the old guy and the young girl tag
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along and they set off the movie is not so much a political harangue or it's it's not even it's not
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even really about any particular issue it's a road trip movie it's not even really a war movie it's a
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road trip movie which are some of my favorite kinds of movies and so they're off they take off and
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immediately you see in episode after episode that this war is uh spreading throughout the country
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but you don't really know who's who so the kirsten dunst character becomes famous for her coverage of
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the antifa massacre but what does the antifa massacre even mean is it that antifa massacred people
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is it that antifa was massacred remains totally unclear presumably the president is kind of a trump
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figure because the popular culture says that trump is tyrannical and blah blah blah but he doesn't
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really act like trump and if if he is a trump guy then are the insurrectionists the good guys they're
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kind of portrayed as the bad guys didn't the american right during the obama administration present
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barack obama as a tyrant is it who's who we just don't know there are two elements of of woke in
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the movie the first one is that pretty much all the bad guys are white guys pretty much kind of and
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pretty much all the good guys are not white guys they're either racial minorities or women
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that guy jesse plemons i think his name is who now plays just every villainous white guy middle
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american character in every single show and movie he plays a really really bad guy who is just
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executing civilians and who almost kills the young girl journalist and uh some other racial minority
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journalists who who joined the fray that's kind of woke you know white guy bad everyone else good
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the even woker element of the movie is not pro-democrat or anti-republican
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the wokest element of the movie is the pretense that journalists are objective from the beginning
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kirsten dunst is teaching this young photojournalist girl that in order to do their jobs they just need to
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go and take the photos when they stumble on a couple of guys being tortured by white guys at a gas station
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the young journalist feels an impulse to help the guys that the people being tortured and kirsten dunst
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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
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we're just there to document from we're totally neutral observers and that of course is what the
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journalists think about themselves but that's not how journalism actually works this is what we hear
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from the libs all the time the journalists were the were the fourth estate we're under attack
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by the conservative forces in america but we're valiantly speaking truth to power but they never
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do that of course and journalists never really did that i'm not saying there's no such thing as a war
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correspondent that shows some bravery of course that exists but journalism broadly does not exist just
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to tell the story neutrally journalists are mouthpieces and propagandists for respected political
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sides that's that's really always what it had been in american history that's why you have newspapers
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like the tennessee democrat for instance and then after the second world war all the liberal journalists
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just pretended to be neutral even though you'd have someone like walter cronkite you know mr objectivity
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walter cronkite was a world federalist okay he was a huge lib and that's true of so many of them
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so that part i i felt was woke and lib but kind of unwittingly so in a way that most people probably on both
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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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month puretalk.com slash knolls warning spoilers ahead they move in on washington dc the the insurrectionist
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forces are there the president seems like he's fleeing but that smart journalist kirsten dunst she
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knows he's still in the white house so they go in they find him there's a little creativity here in
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that the white house press briefing room is just in the white house which is not true it's actually a
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little separate building off to the side but they the forces make it in there they see the white house
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spokesman the press secretary and she's trying to negotiate the release the insurrectionist forces
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just shoot her shoot her dead and even here you're wondering okay is this is this a pro-republican
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thing or a trump thing or this but it's very unclear the white house press secretary is a black woman
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in the liberal uh victim hierarchy this is this is a very sympathetic character
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and she is being rebuffed and interrogated by another black woman and is it and then there's a man
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and there it's just it's very unclear is it who are these insurrectionists the good guy i thought
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insurrectionists were the bad guys but the president had a third term and he was killing american citizens
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and it's just totally totally ambiguous which side is which they make it in and they find the
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president they surround him and the journalist the guy whose name i keep forgetting finally says stop
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stop don't shoot stop and you're waiting here for the journalist to say it's wrong to kill the
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president this is a wrong and he says before you shoot him i gotta get a quote because i drove all
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the way across the country and i need to get a quote and i need to get a picture and the quote another
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big spoiler here says mr president you have a quote he says don't let them shoot me don't stop them
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from killing me and he says okay that'll do they shoot him he gets his picture as all this is
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happening the increasingly aggressive young girl who wants to be the kirsten dunst character she's
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being bolder and bolder and bolder she's taking photo after photo after photo and she's in the line
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of fire for the president's forces kirsten dunst sees this she jumps in to push her out of the way
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kirsten dunst gets shot herself and as she falls dying the young photographer girl snaps her picture
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snaps her death which is a callback to a setup earlier on in the movie when the young girl
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asks kirsten dunst if i were to be shot would you photograph my death kirsten dunst says what do you
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think implying that the job is just about documenting you got to kill your feelings you have to kill your
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desires you are just there to observe and to snap that camera all other desires have to go out the
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window and so you get this lovely callback and inversion of that by the end of the movie that
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part does not really speak so well of journalists necessarily it it plays into the mythology of
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journalism but it also portrays the journalists as psychopaths who are just power hungry extremely
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ambitious and and trying to get clicks you know trying to create the kind of content that will
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attract a lot of attention they would say perhaps they're doing it for historical purposes to get
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the truth out there a more cynical viewer would say you know you're doing it just so that you get more
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eyeballs on your pictures that's a big question here that the journalists are supposed to be totally
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focused on the truth the truth above all things we see in the real world today despite what they may say
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journalists increasingly mocking the idea of the truth just this week just as the movie is coming
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out you have the new ceo of npr mocking the very notion of truth and saying you know we don't we don't
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want to be guided just by the truth everyone has their own truths man you know we want to be guided by
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something other than the truth which of course is is true in the real life of journalism they kill the
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president and then it ends with pictures of these insurrectionists standing around the president's
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dead body the movie overall pretty good because of that nobody's totally a hero kirsten dunst is
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probably the closest to it nobody's totally the villain it's it's not a political harangue in any way
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it's just kind of a fun thriller the acting is excellent stephen henderson who plays the old guy
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is really an excellent character actor they were all pretty good even the young girl who's not quite
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as seasoned as the other ones she turns in a pretty good performance too it's all good it's actually
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oddly enough at the time that we're all complaining about how hollywood is too woke and beating us over
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the head with its politics this movie which is on the surface extremely political is a breath of fresh
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because it's just kind of a fun thriller so on the scale of lame to epic pure movie making zero being
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lame 10 being epic i'd give it a seven seven or eight maybe even a i mean you know what i'm feeling
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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
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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
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four it's it's almost totally neutral it's too nice to journalists that's the really the only problem
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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
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me four and a half plus seven and a half here are the four out of three that's what about 12
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pretty good now this stupid scale that my producer mr davies came up with is really counterintuitive
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anything 10 and over is watchable it's actually that's a pretty good score i would recommend it
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because it is addressing oppressing anxiety people on both sides of the aisle really do feel like
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the country is coming apart and they're right about that the country actually is coming apart
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and the civil society is fraying this was a way to deal with that that doesn't exacerbate the problem
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had hollywood come out with a civil war movie that that were totally one-sided and said you know
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republicans are tearing the country apart and trump is a threat to democracy or whatever nonsense they
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always say that would have been pretty bad no matter how good the movie was but that's not what
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they did they they're tapping into a cultural anxiety dealing with it in a way that leaves a lot of the
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interpretation up to the audience and ultimately discouraging civil war there are some people who
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are really gung-ho for civil war on the left and on the right i'm not because if there were to be a
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civil war that would entail me i don't know like shooting my cousins or something right i call me
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a wallflower but that doesn't really interest me and kirsten dunst has a line in the movie she says i
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covered these wars overseas and i thought the the one bit of activism that could come out of it is just
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by showing the story it would warn people not to do this here but here we are another recurring theme
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that their relatives they're just on the farm somewhere they're just pretending this isn't happening
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they actually walk into a town that's just pretending that it's not occupied that the war
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that the civil society hasn't unraveled there's a shop owner just saying yeah try to ignore it i try
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not to watch the news too much and it's it's very unclear if this war reporting is doing anything i mean
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they get to the end there the the mentors died trying to save them uh he he ends up getting shot and
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they say he gave his life for nothing because they're taking all these pictures but who's even looking at
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them most of the people that we encounter in the movie they're not even paying attention to the news
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so it's just it oddly enough for a just kind of silly summer thriller it it touches on these social
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questions with a great deal of sophistication that's a that's a good movie and then they get the guy from
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parks and rec to be the president nick offerman kind of a funny little little cameo performance
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i know i wanted i went in expecting to hate it it had all the ingredients to be absolutely odious
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what can i say was pretty good you should probably go see it
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