Civil War star Kirsten Dunst has a surprising comparison for Alex Garland's latest movie: Paris, Texas

New movie Civil War may be an action-packed war film, but its star Kirsten Dunst thinks it shares a surprising similarity with a much quieter flick: Paris, Texas. 

That's because, although Civil War documents a second internal conflict in the US, writer-director Alex Garland (known for helming movies like Ex Machina and Annihilation) is British, and Dunst thinks that allowed him to bring a different perspective to the film that an American filmmaker might not have been able to.

"Even though there's discourse everywhere, I think setting it in America, because so many people look to America, makes everything frightening in a different way," she tells GamesRadar+ and the Inside Total Film podcast. "I mean, Paris, Texas is one of my favorite movies, and, you know, sometimes it takes a European or a person from an outside perspective to see the beauty or the horrors of something in a different country."

Paris, Texas, a movie that takes place across the American Southwest, was directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders. The film, first released in 1984, sees reclusive Travis, played by Harry Dean Stanton, reunite with his brother and nephew as they set out to find Travis' missing wife. 

In Civil War, Dunst's character is also on a journey. She plays seasoned war photographer Lee, while Wagner Moura, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny make up the rest of the group of photographers and journalists heading through a war-torn US to get to Washington DC before rebel forces take the White House. 

Civil War is released in cinemas on April 12. For more on the movie, here's why Garland doesn't see his film as an inherently American story and Dunst on why she wanted to work with the "auteur".