Reviews

I'll be blunt- do not waste your time on this film unless you are a film major in school and must write about how far a film can fall from its respective potential subject. Where to begin? Horrendous acting throughout plugs up the movie from the start- from the to-be- expected bad reenactor performance, to the local community theater amateur actor abilities. Then there is the actual script... awful. Awful isn't enough- dire bests sums up the state of your brain trying to follow what is occurring in this (seemingly) student film (?). Truly, it is painful to try to follow this film in any respect to learning something about Carroll. Read any book on Carroll instead. Between the silly script and its players, there is a barrage of poor make-up, costuming, sets, scene locations (the Sonoran Desert as a back drop to the Civil War, really?), editing, uh- just spare yourself. I must also state that many people cry foul on Carroll's story as even being legitimate to begin with. This movie only pushes her possible involvement further into the shadows, quite possibly out of pure embarrassment by association.

Yet another Civil War documentary with poor reenactor performances. There is, of course, the typical run-down of the history with knowledgeable scholars that can assist the CW novice when they are not in the mood to pick up a book. Nothing is said here, however, that most Civil War books don't already cover. If you can make it through the choppy editing, the historical artifacts are interesting. Although, I would recommend a google search on Civil War artifacts before I'd recommend this series. The "respective star power" of Ashley Judd, Trace Adkins, and Dennis Haysbert (the Allstate guy) try to carry your enthusiasm throughout, yet they manage to do very little for the overall momentum. Without naming the best of in CW documentaries and films, really one should just gravitate over to the Ken Burns series and get your fix there. Again, there is no real difference in information here than from most other CW summary pieces- there's poor acting, decent commentary on the part of the historians and somewhat on the big name performers. You would be best to just pick up some books on the subject.