denis888
No, it was not good. I like Chris Cooper very much, he is great in The Patriot, he can do a great job, but here the whole film is so plodding, so gooey and so slow that yawns creep in almost immediately. I understand the intent of the director, but he failed. The tedious, slow, ineptly weak drama drags almost seemingly endlessly for 90 minutes, and even some shooting at the end does not revive this tomb of nature. Bleak, vapid, bland and sepia-tinted tonality is miserable, the performance is at times basic of almost all other actors, and the whole thing is very very dull. I watched this film by force and self-discipline. It never helped, and even the very reality of the whole plot did not help to make this work a bit livelier. No, this one does not work, I am sorry, but this is my impression
drystyx
Hidden gem here.This is a war film, and it gives us the best of all worlds in film making.However, I don't want to build it up too much. It's best to be somewhat pleasantly surprised, like I was.It gives us the old fashioned war film, with a focus on an isolated group of soldiers. Here, it is the Civil War, and the soldiers are on a patrol to confiscate food for their army from Confederate sympathizers.My initial feeling is that the characters are too three dimensional for most of IMDb's bubble boy posters. For the rest of the world, I dare say this story would envelop them in a world they could believe existed.The cinematography is outstanding. The scenery is powerful. Everything about this film is amazing. I'd nominate everyone from cue card holder up for an Academy Award.I'll echo what others have said. The characters look true to the times. Not like 20th or 21st century actors in uniform between video games. This is the real deal. I also like the way the accents were moderate, more Kentucky than the recent push to turn Kentucky into Mississippi. This was the "neutral" state of the Civil War. Historically, and geographically, it has never been the South, but more of the meeting of North and South.I won't tell more of the plot, because I think you should take the ride. Trust these reviews. I don't think this film can possibly get a bad review, unless it's from a jealous competitor.
jawlaw
This film was my first acquaintance with the talents of Chris Cooper. I was deeply impressed with the character he played. I knew when I saw the film that more great things were to come from this gifted actor. He plays a Union Captain who, along with a couple of enlisted men, are foraging in Eastern Kentucky. They happen upon the farm of a "Secesh" woman whose husband has chosen to go off to the Confederacy. The portrayal of Eastern Kentucky, and its seriously divided sentiments during the War, is so very accurate. If you are looking for a war film with a lot of blood and guts, this would not be it. If you are looking for a drama that explores the psychology of peoples at war, actually and philosophically, then this is the best study of how divided loyalties affected the interaction of peoples in the border states during America's Civil War.
MBT
If you're even mildly interested in the War between the States, this film is worth watching. It is great historical story telling. No flashing sabres, no cavalry charges, no carnage -- just the story of a sorry group of Union soldiers stumbling into the farm of a Confederate woman and her son and taking as much as their captain's conscience allows. This quantity moves up and down as events unfold affecting his sense of humanity in conflict with his sense of duty to his men and his cause. Ultimately, he reaches a compromise that any of us would be hard put to top. I appreciate the historical treatment of the war in Kentucky, a slave state that tried to stay neutral but eventually opted to remain in the Union under mysterious political circumstances involving the detention of certain legislators. Roughly half the soldiers from Kentucky fought for each side, but there's never been much treatment of what it was like to have lived there through those times. This film makes a great contribution simply in the "look and feel" of the time and place.
AD
