But social currents don't start a war; organized and opposing armed forces do. We never learn the cause of the conflict, the ideology of the president or any of his policies beyond his reliance on the mechanisms of authoritarianism: He's killed reporters, bombed American citizens, disbanded the FBI and, given that he's serving his third term, probably suspended the Constitution.

Nor do we discover what the Western Forces and the Florida Alliance hope to achieve by overthrowing him — we assume they are fighting for democracy, but that could just be wishful thinking.

Instead, the film focuses on the resolute nature of the four main characters — formidable Lee; her young, eager and initially unwanted acolyte, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny); thrill-addicted Joel; and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the aging correspondent who's seen it all.

They are a compelling band, expertly played and welded together by the belief that their job is to not to judge what they encounter but to record it for the enlightenment of others.

Their "objectivity" is so thorough that they apparently have no interest in context or meaning, namely the obviously cataclysmic series of events that led to this moment. There's little discussion of what Joel wants to ask the president upon finding him or what purpose such an interview would serve beyond being his last. (To be fair, things have devolved to the point where no news outlet appears to be worried about scoops or page views; Lee and Joel are merely hoping to document history.)

Despite spending hours in the car viewing one apocalyptic scene after another, none of our heroes are moved to consider moments when all this might have been avoided or to contemplate the nation's future: Do the Western Forces have a plan beyond the president's removal? Is there an acceptable vice president or speaker of the House waiting in the wings? Does Congress even exist? Who is leading the Western Forces anyway?

And how can Lee and Jessie's families, not to mention a shopgirl in a town the team passes through on their journey, manage to keep pretending that "none of this is happening"?

"Civil War" is essentially a road movie. Its tone is not so much apolitical — Garland is clearly antiwar — as post-political. When the group finds itself in the middle of a firefight at a Christmas village, they ask one of the soldiers they meet there, one wearing camouflage and brightly dyed hair, what's going on.

Someone is shooting at us, he answers. And that is that.

The film attempts to keep the audience in the characters' road-trip bubble — despite being on a journalistic mission, they are apparently too exhausted and overwhelmed to think about anything but the next set of potential dangers. As one appalling sight follows another, though, it seems irresponsible not to wonder, and keep on wondering, what exactly the hell happened.

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