How I Live Now-YA Does Not Have to Pander to Teenagers

Recently, I've been reading lots about John Milius, the maverick filmmaker who rubs the dominant left-politically inclined culture the wrong way in both his persona and his work.  Hollywood has not been kind to him, but he does his own thing and makes his own statements.  Those statements do stick out, especially since he is a voice against the grain.  One of his most famous films is Red Dawn and depending on your personal inclinations, you either love it or you hate it (awesome Basil Poledouris score).  The reason I bring up Red Dawn is that it depicts an apocalypse that is relatively uncommon, that of the mostly conventional war destabilizing the social order of the society of the characters. 

Daisy (Saoirsi Ronan) is an American girl sent overseas to live with relatives in Britain, as World War 3 has broken out. The combatants aren't spelled out, nor are the reasons for the conflict, though Britain is hip deep in the war.  Daisy's family lives out in the sticks and whatever is going on, they hope to avoid it, even when Daisy's aunt, the mother of the British family, is called away (she's a government official).  They hear news reports over the radio.  Occasionally, military planes fly overhead.  One day, a nuke detonates close enough for them to feel the air displacement and be in range of fallout.  But still, they hope to hold out.  Especially Daisy, because she has fallen in love with her older cousin Eddie, who has helped drag her out of the shell she was in when she got to the farmstead. 

However, British soldiers show up, apprehend them and separate the males from the females to take them to "safe houses" for the duration of the crisis.  Things go pear shaped, though, and Daisy and her young cousin end up making their way by foot back into the countryside, avoiding troops as well as brigands to try to find their way home.

This one is a subtle apocalypse, as the crisis isn't the star.  It is just a stage content to stay in the background as much as possible.  It just occasionaly surfaces to remind everyone that, hey, world might be ending and things are all higgedy.  Throw assumptions out the window because there is a new normal in da house.

Being a teenager can be rough.  Sometimes that is when people have first experienced war.  It has to be worse when the war is global.  And you aren't even a soldier.

Good flick.