In the film The War, conflict almost leads to the death of a young boy named Billy Lipnicki who just wanted to grab a key. The film is written as a memoir from the perspective of Lidia Simmons. She tells the story of a conflict between her family, including her brother Stu and her father Stephen, as they fight with the Lipnicki family. The story begins with the children getting into fights with each other over building a tree house, goes on to create a conflict between Stephen and the Lipnicki's father, finally ending in a huge conflict with Stu and Lidia fighting the Lipnicki children, almost ending in the death of Billy Lipnicki. The War is a film that demonstrates how destructive conflict is and that creating it will not solve anything.

After seeing his friend Dodge die in the war, Stephen wants to teach his son that conflicts only create destruction. Stu went to show his dad the tree house that he and Lidia were building, and, while there, Stephen realized that his children had been fighting with the Lipnickis for a long time and weren't going to stop. He tells Stu, "And in the absence of love, Stuart, there is nothing, nothing in this world worth fighting for" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). By this, Stephen is trying to tell his son that fighting the Lipnickis isn't going to solve anything for him or his sister. He says nothing is worth fighting for, trying to get his son to not fight because there is no point to fighting them, they won't stop being mean if he keeps doing it. As he tells Stu about what happened in the war, he tells Stu the story of when he was fighting and had to leave his best friend, Dodge, to die while they left the battlefield. "Boy, sometimes all it takes is a split second for you to do something you'll regret the whole rest of your life," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). He lost Dodge because he had to make a quick decision to let him die, or stay with him and they both die, and he decided to leave and save his own life. He wants to teach Stu that making a quick decision between fighting others and loving them could solve all of their problems. In these examples. Stephen attempts to teach Stu that fighting can only cause harm to others and won't solve anything, therefore Stu and Lidia should stop trying to fight with the Lipnickis.

Violence causes destruction and can kill people, as can be seen with Billy Lipnicki's near death experience. The Lipnickis make a bet with Stu that he can't swim across the water in the quarry while it is draining, and he completes the challenge, so they agree that they will stay out of the tree house. The way the images are constantly changing angles and the sound of the loud water flowing around helps to add drama to the scene. The Lipnickis come to the tree house later, going against the bet, and Stu decides to fight them back. Lidia explains that "War is like a big machine that no one really knows how to run and when it gets out of control it ends up destroying the tings you thought you were fighting for, and a lot of other things you kinda forgot you had," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). The Lipnickis light the tree house on fire while they are fighting Stu and Lidia, so Lidia explains that war just ends up destroying things because in the end, nobody ever wanted to rebuild the tree house and it stayed destroyed from the fire the rest of the film. While everyone is fighting each other, Billy Lipnicki decides to go get the key that was thrown on the top of the quarry when Stu made the bet with one of the other Lipnicki's. Stu is the first one behind him, following up to the tower, and as they are at the top, Billy falls in to the water inside of the quarry and Stu jumps in to save him. He pulls Billy out, but Billy won't breath until, finally, he coughs up water from Lidia and Stu saving him. When he finally starts breathing again, Billy tells Stu, "You know, I saw an angel... a real one... and he was holding on to my hand... and I was going to go live in his kingdom... but he said I must come back and take care of my daddy," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111667/quotes). The fact that Billy almost died, due to the conflict between Stu and Lidia fighting with the Lipnickis, shows that conflict does not solve anything. Billy almost died, which showed everyone that they needed to stop creating conflicts, and it worked because after this incident, they never had a conflict with each other again, they finally learned a lesson about how conflict does not solve problems.

The War is a film that demonstrates how destructive conflict is and that creating it will not solve anything. In the beginning of the film, Stephen tells his son that no conflict is worth fighting for and that he should be careful because anything can change your life in an instant. Stephen tells his son this because he lost in his best friend, Dodge, in a huge conflict, the Vietnam War. Stu does not act on what his dad says, instead he continues to fight with the Lipnickis, in fact it gets worse once his father dies. Near the end of the film, the Lipnickis make a bet with Stu and they lose, but decide to fight back anyways. The tree house gets set on fire and, ultimately, destroyed, and never rebuilt. Also, Billy almost drowns, however Stu and Lidia save him. This is when everything changes and Stu realizes what his father had taught him, that conflict does not solve anything. All of the other children realize that the conflict is only causing damage and almost took Billy's life, so they decide to stop fighting as well. Conflict will never solve any problems, the world must learn to create love, rather than conflict because it only causes destruction and will never allow people to solve problems.