Producers: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Gregory Goodman   Director: Alex Garland   Screenplay: Alex Garland   Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons, Nelson Lee, Evin Lai and Jefferson White   Distributor: A24

Grade: C+

The incredible carnage that could engulf the United States if the country actually experienced a modern-day civil war is depicted pretty effectively by director Andrew Garfield and his technical team—production designer Caty Maxey, cinematographer Rob Hardy and editor Jake Roberts—in their brutally violent cautionary tale about the most extreme form political polarization can take.  Yes, the impact depends in large measure on sudden jump scares of the sort so common to horror movies—a category into which “Civil War” could be placed without much exaggeration—but, abetted by a hammering score from Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, it’s certainly a potent brew, from an opening riot in the streets of New York to a closing assault on a heavily barricaded White House, with a series of smaller but shocking confrontations scattered periodically between the two. 

And yet ultimately the film is disappointing for two fundamental reasons.  One is that the conflict is presented in a virtual vacuum; details about the political causes are practically non-existent, and the few that are provided strain credulity.  It’s stated, for example, that the President (Nick Offerman) is in his third term, but how the constitutional limitation was sidestepped is never explained, and his televised statement at the start doesn’t go beyond patriotic bromides (empty, as it turns out, since his military backing is crumbling).  Moreover the makeup of the rebel Western Force, as it’s called, is designed to sound absurd, being an alliance of Texas and California.  Nor is it explained how the rebels are so well armed, with jets and helicopters in abundance (as well as an apparently expert command structure), though ragtag gunmen are also part of the resistance.

Of course it can be countered that to give the war greater specificity would turn the film into a political tract espousing a liberal or conservative point of view.  But unmoored from any recognizable reality, the battles come to seem more akin to video game than drama.

As it is, moreover, the strongman persona of the president gives him a Trumpian aura (at one point he’s compared to the likes of Mussolini and Ceausescu), and the character of those who appear to be his supporters in the countryside is not appealing: some scruffy gunmen, including a proud redneck (Jefferson White), torturing a couple of victims at a gas station, for instance, are the very opposite.  That sequence, though, merely has a horror movie ugliness; the film’s one genuinely unsettling scene comes when Jesse Plemons shows up as a soldier leading a squad disposing of bloodied bodies in a ditch—and willing to add others he nonchalantly dismisses as “not real Americans” to the pile of corpses.

Those whom he threatens are the quartet of reporters who are the surrogates through whom viewers traverse the continental battleground as they travel from New York to Washington: Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a famous war photojournalist; Joel (Wagner Moura), her excitable colleague and driver; Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), her elderly mentor who cadges a ride with them to Charlottesville, near the front lines; and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young photographer who idolizes Lee and persuades Joel to let her tag along.  Most survive the encounter with the murderous soldiers, though two friends of Joel’s (Nelson Lee and Evin Lai), who have the misfortune of being Asian, do not.

And here we encounter the second major problem in “Civil War.”  Simply put, these four major characters have little depth, and their banter is banal.  We meant to see that Lee goes through an emotional crisis as the journey progresses—she’s obviously agonizing over the forced necessity of educating the callow, reckless Jessie in their dangerous work (which leads to an act of self-sacrifice)—but Dunst never manages to make us understand what Lee is going through, except in the most superficial way; and as for Jessie, in Spaeny’s flat rendering her transformation from innocent to expert is never convincing.  Henderson’s grizzled world-weariness is fine, but Moura’s extremes—from frat-boy exuberance over getting to the action to sputtering rage toward the close—have no overall grounding.  Plemons’ icy reserve, however, is chilling, an authentic heart of darkness.

If Garland had managed to capture more of that spirit in “Civil War,” the film could have achieved the profundity it’s clearly straining for.  As it is, it can be admired for its desire to warn us about the potential cost of the escalating tensions that threaten to fracture U.S. society but, in the end, it comes across as viscerally intense but intellectually timid and dramatically thin.

Producers: Ben Cornwell, Jordan Foley, Nick Smith and Ben Leclair   Director: Adam Carter Rehmeier   Screenplay: Adam Carter Rehmeier   Cast:  Conor Sherry, Gabriel LaBelle, Mika Abdalla, Gillian Vigman, Nick Robinson, David Costabile, June Gentry, April Clark, Kate Robertson Pryor, Steve Berg, J.D. Evermore, Christian James and Michael Bonini   Distributor: Republic Pictures/Paramount

Grade: C+

Despite the fact that the ads make it look like “Porky’s” redux, Adam Carter Rehmeier’s “Snack Shack” has higher aspirations: it’s a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy-drama about growing up in small-town Nebraska in the early 1990s, and while much of it has the raunchiness and rough language typical of a rowdy teen flick (plenty of F-bombs here), it also wants to say something about the fragility of friendship, and of life itself.  Unfortunately, it too often stumbles into cliché, chaos and repetition, winding up a messy, overlong but generally likable trip down memory lane.

Rehmeier’s surrogate is A.J. (Conor Sherry), the more reserved member of a fourteen-year old duo, the other being his motormouth long-time pal Moose (Gabriel LaBelle).  In the summer of 1991, the fast-talking, heavy-smoking pair try a series of schemes to make money.  First they aim to hit it big at the dog-racing track across the state line in Iowa, which they run off to during a semester-ending school field trip to a zoo.  They get caught, and A.J.’s parents Jean (Gillian Vigman, rather shrill) and Judge (David Costabile, pleasantly sedate) threaten him with military school unless he shapes up, though the suggestion that he take on a grass-cutting business is undercut by allergies that almost prevent the wheezing kid from tending to the family’s own yard.

But that doesn’t deter Moose, an entrepreneurial hustler with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of get-rich-quick suggestions.  Next comes a plan to brew beer and sell whatever they don’t drink themselves.  When that idea is also stymied, even though an older friend pronounces the stuff pretty tasty, Moose suggests that they look into renting the snack shack at the local swimming pool and catering to the kids who descend on it every summer day.  Taking their college funds out of the bank (something that doesn’t sit well with their parents) and raising money through other means—like painting addresses on curbs—they outbid others at the town auction (by way too much, as it turns out) and begin cleaning out the crud, replacing the equipment as cheaply as possible, and ordering supplies from delivery men who might be persuaded to provide a few more boxes than they pay for. 

The operation turns out to be surprisingly successful, even if A.J. is stuck with more of the grunt work than self-styled idea man Moose.  Of course, they’re still the targets of the town bullies (Michael Bonini and Christian James), but fortunately they have a protector in A.J.’s older cousin Shane (Nick Robinson, excellent), a well-spoken veteran of the Gulf War who intervenes not only with their tormentors but A.J.’s parents who, he suggests to them, might be riding him too hard.

But alas, just as things seem to be going so well, the bond between A.J. and Moose is threatened by the arrival of Brooke (Mika Abdalla), a teen a bit older than the guys, who moves into the house next door to A.J. with her military dad while he awaits reassignment; she becomes a lifeguard at the swimming pool where the snack shack’s located.  Brooke is a sassy girl with a nasty mouth, but both A.J. and Moose are attracted to her, and she plays them off against one another, although she’s clearly more interested in swooning A.J. 

Despite the fact that Brooke and A.J. have gotten very close by the movie’s end—undermining the camaraderie between the guys—she remains even then a rather opaque character, in some respects a younger version of Mrs. Robinson.  To be sure, the queasiness factor is much less here, not just because all three are still teens and Abdalla, despite Brooke’s manipulations, keeps the character short of simple unpleasantness, but because Sherry and LaBelle, to be perfectly honest, look way past fourteen, though their exuberance and devil-may-care attitude when they’re together might convince you briefly they’re as young as the characters say they are.  On the other hand, their age helps the actors come across persuasively in the screenplay’s more serious moments. 

As when the movie takes a darker turn in the final act, in which a tragedy forces both A.J. and Moose to confront the realities of life and death and Brooke leaves town when her dad is ordered to Germany.  A final scene between A.J. and Judge, played nicely by both Sherry and Costabile, signals that his father recognizes that A.J. is growing up, and that their relationship, like the one the young man has with his best friend, is destined to change.

Shot in Rehmeier’s hometown of Nebraska City by cinematographer Jean Philippe Bernier, “Snack Shack” conveys a real sense of place, with Francesca Palombo’s production design no doubt reflecting how little the Midwest hamlet, with a population under 10,000, has changed over the intervening years, and the costumes by Anais Castaldi and Hannah Greenblatt capturing the period style without fuss.  One wishes that Justin Krohn’s editing might have smoothed out the ramshackle construction of Rehmeier’s script better, but Keegan DeWitt’s score, along with the obligatory pop needle drops, lends an appropriate tone to things.

Thanks especially to Sherry and LaBelle, Rehmeier’s disjointed “Snack” offers plenty of tasty bites, even if ultimately it doesn’t make for a well-rounded cinematic meal.