The acting is OK. No stand-out performances, but none too terrible. The twists and character arcs are predictable.
Instead of focusing on the effects of civil war, it's a run-of-the-mill turf war that borders on racist stereotypes of gang communities. There's an election too, although the candidates are all violent kingpins preaching about unity while murdering dissidents, so it's difficult to really care.
Tonally it's a mess. In one scene the DMZ is portrayed as ruins torn apart by a decade of war, and in a subsequent scene you have vivid yellow colour grading and twenty-somethings barbecuing and drinking out of mason jars like it's Glastonbury festival. Everyone is clean, well-dressed, and happy. I really admire the costume design, but it's more suited to a catwalk than a war zone.
There's a very tone-deaf moment early on where Ortega is smiling in a happy hipster marketplace, chuckling over "people at their worst" - as if civil war isn't so bad as long as you can drink home brew at the vintage fair. Ten seconds later we're in a clinic watching a teen cough blood.
The cinematography is all over the place. A particularly heavy-handed shot is filmed upside down, because "Ortega's world has been turned upside down" and the only way to show this was by making viewers stand on their heads. The words "I don't want to be reminded" are scribbled on the wall of her old apartment building. My, how symbolic. Several close-up shots of a character's hands, and dialogue is repeated just in case you didn't realise it was important the first three times.
There's an almost comical over-reliance on lens flares, shaky-cam, and focus pulls. Action scenes are a blurry, jumpy mess of dutch angles. Each line of dialogue has its own shot, sometimes two. There's never more than a few seconds to focus on a character's emotions or reactions before cutting away.
And of course, there are plenty of inaccuracies and continuity errors. Little things like wounds requiring major surgery are miraculously healed with just some stitches and kind words. Dates on ID badges, Ortega's son's height chart, in dialogue and in promotional material don't quite add up. A gubernatorial election is held, glossing over issues like which federal union the governor belongs to. It just feels lazy.
Because, you know, there's a civil war. Apparently that's supposed to affect things.
