Based - if loosely in places - upon real events, this film is a fascinating sidelight on a little-known aspect of the Civil War.
Newton Knight is a Confederate Army doctor, but becomes disillusioned with it after learning how the conscription laws are being amended to suit wealthy planters with twenty or more slaves, and even more with the ruthless way in which the soldiers' families are being reduced to destitution by the requisitions of Confederate commissaries and foraging parties, who are frequently more rapacious than the Yankees. I recall this being touched upon in another Civil War film, Shenandoah, whose protagonist translated the word "requisition" as "steal". That's pretty much how it is in this film too.
Knight returns home to Jones County, Mississippi, and gathers together a large band of deserters and draft resisters, and even a number of runaway slaves. Like Robin Hood's men in Sherwood Forest, they hide out in swamplands where cavalry cannot go and infantry are easily ambushed. From this bolthole, they go forth to recapture corn and other foodstuffs seized by the local commissary-general, and give it back to the starving local people.
Needless to say this provokes a response. They are hunted back into their swamp refuge, and any who fall into government hands - even young boys - are hanged out of hand. Under this pressure, they hoist a stars and stripes, proclaim themselves "The Free State of Jones", and seek assistance from the Yankees. The latter, however, are less than enthusiastic about such irregular forces, and fob them off with a few old hunting rifles - a pattern to be repeated after the war. But somehow, Knight and his men manage to hold out till the Confederacy falls.
Thus the first two-thirds of the film, and it's good. But the final third, I have to say, doesn't live up to it. In brief, Knight joins the Republican Party, marries a former slave, and sides with the government (though now only in a bit part as a Deputy Marshall or something) during Reconstruction.
While interesting in its way, this doesn't grip as did the wartime scenes. Above all, Knight is now a general without an army. It's all just about him. After Appomattox, we hear next to nothing about his followers, especially the white ones who were the great majority. About the only mention they get is a passing one where Knight expresses regret at his failure to persuade them to join the Union League. Yet why should they? What could it offer them? The Union showed no interest in them during the war, and is no more likely to do so now. What would they gain to make up for having to still further antagonise their "secesh" neighbours, now returned from the Rebel Army, who are already probably less than enthused by their war records? So that's it. As far as the film is concerned, they simply vanish from the scene. Knight's principal remaining follower, a Freedman named Moses, is, I understand, fictional.
Whilst this last forty minutes all takes place against the backdrop of the Reconstruction period, Knight's actual influence on the course of events is next to nil. In one scene he manages to compel election officials to let some negroes vote, but we learn that the ballot box was conveniently "lost" and their votes not counted. And the Federal government is no more help after the war than during it.
It all smacks of a "life of Robin Hood" in which the final third is given over to an anticlimactic "epilogue" with Robin fighting single-handed, and to little avail, against continuing injustice when in spite of all his efforts Prince John has ascended the throne, and the Sheriff of Nottingham is back doing business as usual. As for the Merrie Men, they are all gone home with Royal pardons, and contentedly picking up their former lives, their "Lincoln green" days in the forest put long behind them, save perhaps as a source of bedtime stories for the kids.
Sorry to sound so negative, and I still think this movie is well worth a view. But watch it for the wartime scenes. Had it stopped at April 1865, not a great deal would have been lost.
Newton Knight is a Confederate Army doctor, but becomes disillusioned with it after learning how the conscription laws are being amended to suit wealthy planters with twenty or more slaves, and even more with the ruthless way in which the soldiers' families are being reduced to destitution by the requisitions of Confederate commissaries and foraging parties, who are frequently more rapacious than the Yankees. I recall this being touched upon in another Civil War film, Shenandoah, whose protagonist translated the word "requisition" as "steal". That's pretty much how it is in this film too.
Knight returns home to Jones County, Mississippi, and gathers together a large band of deserters and draft resisters, and even a number of runaway slaves. Like Robin Hood's men in Sherwood Forest, they hide out in swamplands where cavalry cannot go and infantry are easily ambushed. From this bolthole, they go forth to recapture corn and other foodstuffs seized by the local commissary-general, and give it back to the starving local people.
Needless to say this provokes a response. They are hunted back into their swamp refuge, and any who fall into government hands - even young boys - are hanged out of hand. Under this pressure, they hoist a stars and stripes, proclaim themselves "The Free State of Jones", and seek assistance from the Yankees. The latter, however, are less than enthusiastic about such irregular forces, and fob them off with a few old hunting rifles - a pattern to be repeated after the war. But somehow, Knight and his men manage to hold out till the Confederacy falls.
Thus the first two-thirds of the film, and it's good. But the final third, I have to say, doesn't live up to it. In brief, Knight joins the Republican Party, marries a former slave, and sides with the government (though now only in a bit part as a Deputy Marshall or something) during Reconstruction.
While interesting in its way, this doesn't grip as did the wartime scenes. Above all, Knight is now a general without an army. It's all just about him. After Appomattox, we hear next to nothing about his followers, especially the white ones who were the great majority. About the only mention they get is a passing one where Knight expresses regret at his failure to persuade them to join the Union League. Yet why should they? What could it offer them? The Union showed no interest in them during the war, and is no more likely to do so now. What would they gain to make up for having to still further antagonise their "secesh" neighbours, now returned from the Rebel Army, who are already probably less than enthused by their war records? So that's it. As far as the film is concerned, they simply vanish from the scene. Knight's principal remaining follower, a Freedman named Moses, is, I understand, fictional.
Whilst this last forty minutes all takes place against the backdrop of the Reconstruction period, Knight's actual influence on the course of events is next to nil. In one scene he manages to compel election officials to let some negroes vote, but we learn that the ballot box was conveniently "lost" and their votes not counted. And the Federal government is no more help after the war than during it.
It all smacks of a "life of Robin Hood" in which the final third is given over to an anticlimactic "epilogue" with Robin fighting single-handed, and to little avail, against continuing injustice when in spite of all his efforts Prince John has ascended the throne, and the Sheriff of Nottingham is back doing business as usual. As for the Merrie Men, they are all gone home with Royal pardons, and contentedly picking up their former lives, their "Lincoln green" days in the forest put long behind them, save perhaps as a source of bedtime stories for the kids.
Sorry to sound so negative, and I still think this movie is well worth a view. But watch it for the wartime scenes. Had it stopped at April 1865, not a great deal would have been lost.