The Best Scene In Civil War Made One Of The Actors Cry For A Half Hour

Spoilers for "Civil War" follow.

Alex Garland's "Civil War" was a box office hit, but it was also one of the most polarizing movies of the year. Some folks praised the movie (you can read our positive review right here), while others seemed perturbed and even downright annoyed by it. Garland's script deliberately remains neutral about the fictional civil war that engulfs the film, primarily because the film's main characters — a gaggle of war correspondents — also remain neutral. They don't take sides; they just want to get the story. In my humble opinion, this is a feature, not a bug, but I can also completely understand why it bothers some folks.

All that said, even those who don't care for the film seem to agree there's one scene that serves as a standout moment. Midway through the picture, the main characters are captured by two soldiers. One of those soldiers is played memorably by an uncredited Jesse Plemons, who turns in a brief-but-terrifying performance as a murderous racist wearing red plastic sunglasses. "What kind of American are you?" he asks, delivering the film's most quotable line of dialogue.  

As it turns out, the scene proved so harrowing to shoot that one of the film's stars ended up breaking down in tears. 

In the scene in question, rookie photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and a foreign correspondent named Bohai (Evan Lai) are captured by Plemons' character and another soldier, who are in the process of dumping bodies into a mass grave. Joel, a Reuters journalist played by Wagner Moura, seasoned photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), who have both been traveling with Jessie, and Tony (Nelson Lee), a Hong Konger reporter who is friends with Joel, show up and try to diffuse the situation. Joel (wrongly) assumes that if they simply tell the soldiers they're journalists, the soldiers will let them go. Instead, Plemons' character proceeds to grill the reporters in a way that's both weirdly amusing and incredibly terrifying. He kills both Bohai and Tony, and it's pretty clear he's going to kill the rest of the group, too. Luckily, Joel, Lee, and Jessie's colleague, reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), drives up in the gang's van and runs Plemons' character over. 

It's a genuinely frightening scene, heightened by both the tension of the moment and Plemons' movie-stealing performance. This is the only scene Plemons is in, and he has very little screentime, and yet everything he does is electric (and very, very scary). "Civil War" is now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital, and the physical disc release features a six-part documentary titled "Torn Asunder: Waging Alex Garland's Civil War." While being interviewed for the documentary, Wagner Moura talks about how much the scene got to him on an emotional level. 

Moura says this was "by far the most intense scene that we did" for the film, adding: "When I read that scene, me being a foreigner, not American [Moura is Brazilian], the racism in that scene is so strong ... and the hate ... and we have Jesse Plemons, him being the amazing actor that he is, he made it even harder." Moura goes on to add:

"I remember after the day was about to end ... after begging for my life and my friends [lives], and seeing the manifestation of racism in Jesse's performance, I laid down in the grass and I was crying ... [I] was crying for half an hour after the scene ... I was destroyed."

Of Plemons' performance, Cailee Spaeny adds: "He knows exactly how to cut through, he's so charming, and absolutely terrifying in that role." Sadly, Plemons isn't interviewed for the documentary, but there is a snippet of behind-the-scenes footage where he's seen telling director Alex Garland that he "felt dirty in my soul" shooting the scene, which sums things up pretty succinctly. 

It's worth noting that while Plemons, one of our best working actors, steals the scene, everyone is doing excellent work here, particularly Moura, who plays the moment perfectly — Joel is trying really hard to keep his cool and not show how frightened he is. The fact that Moura revealed the sequence affected him on such a deep emotional level only speaks to how impactful the scene in question is. 

"Civil War" is now on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.