Men Go to Battle

The story is about 2 brothers in Kentucky, Francis and Henry, hard pressed economically, in the winter at the start of the American Civil War, 1861. They live on a farm overrun by weeds. The brothers horse around at a camp fire one night with knives and Henry gets a bad cut. They seek medical help at the estate of the Smalls, a well to-do shopkeeper family in the area. While waiting for Henry to be treated, Francis socializes with the Smalls and their guests at a party being held there. Henry returns, see his brother socializing, feels left out and disappears into the darkness. Francis, now alone, take steps to work the land. Meanwhile, Henry joins the union army and enjoys a life of getting 3 square meals a day in exchange for his service. The two brothers correspond by letter, each forging their own destiny. The climax comes when Henry's unit is overrun and wiped out in a battle. Being the lone survivor, he reject military life, deserts, and makes his way back to the Kentucky farm. Upon arriving at the farm, Henry discovers Francis is now a successful tobacco farmer and married to a Small. The Smalls, on the other hand have lost their business and are out in the cold. This movie is a parable about how one pursues his vision of possibility for the future and another forgoes that and settles for a life of basic survival. This is a universal lesson in life. Each moment, the universe hold an infinite number of possibilities. We choose only one in this life. What we choose can lead to a life from rags to riches or a life of rags to one of being a wandering army deserter.

I found this movie in a section on Netflix called award winning movies and after viewing the movie I figured it must of been a participation ribbon. The characters were so poorly portrayed that you could not make connection to them or care about what happens to them. The acting was wooden and tiresome, the plot poorly executed. Not a good effort and not worth watching.

A civil war story about 2 brothers. A visual window into the human heart, where feelings seek resolution.

It's necessary to get over the lack of a steady-cam: the first few minutes can feel a bit disorienting, jerky, and off-putting because the camera is hand-held. Stay with it!

Very quickly, I became mesmerized. I felt as if I were transported to the time and place. The raw, realistic clothing, housing, and surroundings of that era (so different from today and seldom presented realistically) drew me into the time and place. I felt as if I were being privileged to watch real people -- without makeup, in their everyday clothes, struggling through horrific circumstances. I mourned the end of the movie, I would have gladly stayed with these people for another hour.

Acting, costuming, sets at their absolute best.I was intrigued by the reviews, saying that the movie was made for $500,000 when the military re-enactment scenes alone should have cost 4x that amount.

It's difficult to comprehend what it is some reviewers saw in this film. I see some of them saying it was like looking through a window into another time, and I suppose there may be some truth to that. But imagine someone looking through a window into your life on a random, drab, uneventful day, and how bored they would be watching you go through your daily routine. That is essentially this film.

Except it is worse than that. The characters rarely speak, and when they do it is never meaningful, just the stuttering utterances of awkward, unintelligent men as they stumble through the mundane events of their rural lives. There is virtually no emotion in any of the characters: they are all drab, dour, and boring. Emotional characters whose motivations and desires are clear and relatable can sometimes draw us into something even if it lacks a compelling plot, but this film has neither. Not only does it lack a compelling plot, it lacks any plot at all. There is no pacing to the story: no rise, no fall, no drama. The film even managed to make a civil war battle seem drab and boring. The character who goes to war is not animated even when life and death hang in the balance. He shows no fear, no passion, none of the hatred for the enemy that men summon to compel them to kill before their foes kill their friend and themselves. He seems to have a friend who reads and writes letters for him, but we do not see whether his friend falls in battle, and he certainly never looks for him.

Understated is not always bad, but this film stretches it to unstated. The film has nothing to say, nothing to show us, and absolutely no point. I simply cannot imagine how anyone would come away from this experience not feeling like they were robbed of their time. If not for the anticipation of hoping that something might happen (nothing does), I could have had the same experience watching paint dry, and would have come away no less emotionally or intellectually satisfied.

As a final note, the title of this film feels quite inappropriate. There is no conflict in the film to which that assertion applies, and if it is merely a statement of what the film is supposed to be about, it is also incorrect. If they're just trying to tell us what's going to happen (almost nothing), it should rightly be "A Man Goes to a Battle, While Another Does Not" and neither has any clear reason or motivation for doing or not doing these things. I thought perhaps toward the end there might be a conflict, the brother who stayed resenting the brother who left for abandoning him, and the brother who left thinking the brother who stayed a coward, or something, and perhaps telling him that "Men Go to Battle" as a challenge to his manhood. Alas, conflict would require emotion, and both conflict and emotion seem utterly beyond the abilities or intentions of the filmmakers. Instead the characters simply plod along, and the paint slowly dries.

What is happening on a lot of the reviews posted on the IMDb site is that the reviewer must have an interest be that financial or simply they know the actors, writers, producers, etc. What ends up happening is when we (a typical IMDb user) check the reviews on little known movies, we end up getting a load of BS and personal bias.

Let me set the record straight on this movie for anyone looking for a honest personal review. This is maybe the worst movie made in the last couple of years. There is no story, the acting is pathetic, it's way too long, way to slow, there is absolutely no reason to watch this garbage. Your life cannot be so completely void that you need to bring this trite into it. To say this movie is a complete and total waste of time would actually be understating it. I'm sick and tired of being misled by brain dead reviewers. The bottom line is avoid this movie, do NOT waste your precious time or money on this crap, even with your finger on the fast forward button, it won't make this one go away soon enough. Just in case you didn't quite get the message....I HATED THIS MOVIE AND EVERYTHING ABOUT IT INCLUDING THOSE REVIEWERS WHO RECOMMENDED IT.