The American Civil War lasted for about four years - this film felt slightly longer.
We open in 1861 with a long and meandering introduction to our characters. It is the golden time before the war, and we are treated to bucolic scenes of the harvest and people courting. We know it can’t last and are eventually transported to a battle in 1863 where the Blues and the Greys are facing off, in a small scale battle, in some woods.
The battle scene is the highlight of the film but it does highlight the small budget that is in play, with the 20 odd soldiers, who comprise each army, struggling to make the scene look epic. It looks daft that they are all crammed together to try and show scale as it’s clear that they would have fought better by spreading out a bit.
The battle isn’t well choreographed with at times it being unclear who is shooting who. This may be deliberate to show the horrors of war, but for me it just looked a bit unfocused and messy. There were several kills with the actors being shown to be hit many times from different angles in slow motion. This was a strange choice by the director as it took you out of the moment and made the thing look like a rap video.
With one side routed the soldiers flee into the woods and are detached from their units. Our main hero, Harrison, is with another soldier and they meet up with four others and set up a camp. Over an never-ending night the men share stories and food and we learn that Harrison hasn’t read any of the letters he received from his sweetheart, as he doesn’t read too good and that.
His new friend reads all his letters for him and sadly there’s no juicy stuff. There is however plenty of violin music accompanying the endless letter reading so we have that at least. I was expecting a bit more during this section to be honest, but maybe I just missed what was happening in the dark. “I can’t see a damn thing!“ someone exclaims at one point - I hear you brother, but obviously I can’t see you.
The next morning Harrison is awoken by a kick to the ribs. The nasty one with the medical background has discovered that the soldiers are from different sides and decides to take those from his enemy prisoner, so that he can return to his lines without being branded a deserter. A great plan, but one that quickly flounders as the upper hand switches back and forth between the two sides.
Who will win the day? And will the night of bonding help heal the schism between the two groups and across America as a whole? Probably not, as the battle is still raging and those extras seem keen to get home…
This was an awful film that looked like some Civil War re-enactor’s pet project that somehow found its way onto Amazon Prime. Fair enough it was based on a true incident, but one thing this effort will teach you is that not all true events are deserving of being recreated. There probably was a decent story in here to be fair, but the execution was just plain awful.
I was expecting some great revelation or horror, but in the end it was the old 'futility of war' message rote large for no entertainment or learning benefit whatsoever.
It didn’t look like there was a profession actor on show at all, which is fair enough as they also dispensed with a writer, editor and director too! Some scenes rambled on forever with the fireside letter reading section taking up an inordinate amount of the film for zero benefit whatsoever. You may say it built up Harrison’s character but alas there was none to begin with and all this added was that he couldn’t read.
The attempts at healing the divides were ham-fisted as was the conclusion which basically shouted ‘That’s the budget done, bring back the re-enacting guys’. Overall this was a painful watch and it’s just a pity Lincoln isn’t about to free this guff from my consciousness.
Best Bit : Opening Battle Scenes - ‘W’ Rating : 8/23
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