The Second Civil War

Phil Hartman is hilarious as the inept and waffling President, and Beau Bridges convincing as the Governor of Idaho, in this movie where mistakes and misread news pile up until a seemingly innocuous situation becomes a second civil war.

Phil Hartman brings some of the sarcastic wit from Newsradio into this telemovie. Some of the funniest moments are when he is actually debating with himself or others over what actions to take. Meanwhile the movie slowly progresses along the lines where not only is war imminent in the country, but war seems to be erupting everywhere between people - Congressmen, newsmen, et al...

Quite an engaging movie and the ending is one you would not want to miss as well, if just for that few seconds of riotous and comical misunderstanding.

A funny, old-fashioned political farce set in an up-to-the-minute situation. An aggressive woman who heads an organization to "save the children" plans to move Pakistani orphans to Idaho. The governor of that state (Beau Bridges) decides to play to anti-immigrant sentiment by saying he will close the borders against further immigration.

The American President (Phil Hartman) is a simpleton who managed by his political adviser (James Coburn). They're only interested in re-election, and are perfectly willing to resort to civil war to make it happen.

A CNN-like news organization, "NN", which employs a rainbow of immigrants, and whose announcer is James Earl Jones, plays the potential conflict for all the advertising dollars it's worth.

The governor (Beau Bridges) is really much more interested in his affair with a Mexican American reporter for "NN", and she seems to be the only person aware of the irony.

It is the near future and a nuclear attack on Pakistan from India has left millions as refugees. As a planeload of orphans leaves for America, the Governor of Idaho declares Idaho's borders shut to immigrants. With one eye on the opinion poles, the President of the United States reacts with a strong hand and gives the Governor 67.5 hours to change his mind (thus avoiding a ratings clashing with a popular soap opera on a non-news channel). As a news network tries to engineer the best view of the action, events spiral out of control with racial tension being triggered in Texas and Los Angeles.

I do not know which film came first but in 1997 this film was put out on TV at around the same time as Wag the Dog was released. Wag was a superb film that was very sharp and funny and it is to this film's detriment that it is very easy to compare the two. Although the plots are different they both satirise the media's influence on politics and politics' concern with image and winning votes and do so with a big cast and a mix of tension and laughs.

However it is not as well carried off here as it was in Wag The Dog and it gets bogged down in rather sappy and obvious messages about acceptance of one another. In some way this is pointed out in funny ways such as Congressman Singh having a deep south accent, the Governor eating Mexican food for breakfast and in love with a Mexican woman; but too often it is obvious and a little sappy. This takes away its intelligence and makes it feel less clever than it really should be to be as sharp a satire as it clearly wants to be. On the flipside of this the film isn't nearly as funny as it should be – it has the occasional really funny bit (James Coburn suggesting that the Irish can be taken off birth control to outbreed the other races and thus win votes was akin to some of Dr Strangelove for my money!) but generally it is not as funny as it really should be.

However I still really enjoyed it and felt it was both clever and funny and even if too much of it wasn't up to the standard of really good satire, it is still worth seeing. The cast echoes the ensemble feel of Wag The Dog even if it lacks a couple of really big names in the way Wag did. None of them really dominate the film or really stand out, instead they seem happy to share the lines and the screentime without overplaying – only Coburn really goes for it and makes a good impression on the film. Having said that the majority do OK with what little they have and it is hard to ignore a cast that features so many famous faces. CoBurn is great even if Hartman, surprisingly, fails to make much of an impact. Bridges but lumbered with much of the 'message' in later stages, Jones is worth seeing although it is Hedaya and Perlman who dominate the newsroom scenes. Leary makes the bridge between this and Wag and the rest of the cast features all manner of faces including Elizabeth Peña, Dick Miller, Kevin Dunn and Kevin McCarthy.

Overall this is a good film but not as good as it should have been; for my money satire needs to be funny and clever and, while this manages to be both at times, it is not as consistent as it really should have been. It gets bogged down in the message and it loses it's edge when it really should be getting stronger and sharper. It is by no means as good as Wag the Dog but it is still worth a look as, although not consistent it is still interesting in its comments and is sporadically funny and clever.

Calling it the near future in the beginning without specifying the year worked great since this could've been the actual state of the USA a couple of years ago, being absolutely the black comedy in real life. The beginning of India nuking Pakistan was not something I expected from this movie. But then that leading to internal conflict in the US, then personal situations of politicians and the prejudices of people working together to make everything worse and worse as it went on all were really great ideas. Choosing to centre the movie in a newsroom so they can cover everywhere was also a great choice. There are just so many great ideas in this film and so many commentaries made. A lot of them worked and a lot of them didn't. It was a bit overcrowded. I feel like this would've worked better if it was much longer with more things grounding it to the narrative to let the messages speak for themselves. The whole wasn't really as great as the sum of the parts. There are many things in it that are shown like they are exposing stuff, while the direction makes it feel like even while showing such things, they are not understanding the actual complexities and believe in a more idealistic world without considering what should actually be done. It could also be attributed that a lot of these might be considered hyperbolic in the 90s while it feels much closer to reality now, so that may be why the very Americanised idealistic view the makers had that they were afraid to be broken. There are also many aspects of it that clearly show this is a pre-9/11 American movie, which couldn't have been part of such a movie afterwards.

Overall, I loved a lot of it but thought some of it was pretty stupid. However, as a movie, it did work to get its point across, and being almost prophetic of how The US has become recently, it deserves appreciation, even though it has its fair share of flaws.

Talk about biting political satire that's probably the most effective thing since Wag the Dog. There's this made for HBO film that came out in 1997 titled The Second Civil War. Like many of the decent films of that decade, it takes shots at all sides (it might lean a little more to the left than the right, but only a little, which is quite refreshing), takes aim at politicians and the media, and begs the question at how good of an idea the Melting Pot and forced immigration really is (it tackles those issues in more directions than you're used to). And it ends on a somewhat dreary (yet provides a decent last laugh) note that doesn't provide any answers, at least no easy ones, leaving it up to the viewer to ponder. God I miss the days when they wouldn't bash a blunt message over your head.