A great little "character study" movie. A little snapshot of life on a remote small farm in the hills where the man has gone to fight for the South, and a Northern patrol is out foraging for food. And it really shows the overall hatred of the "other side" generated by the War, but also how that breaks down in a one-on-one basis.
I still prefer RIDE WITH THE DEVIL for a CW movie. Local people in the counties around Kansas City Missouri deciding to fight the Northern occupying forces on a small-scale guerrila warefare basis. And how the people in the area live with this going on and act/react to both parts of the War. The only "big battle" scenes are the raid on Lawrence Kansas near the end of the movie. It starred Toby McQuire, Skeet Ulrich, the singer Jewel, directed by Ang Lee - pretty big-name hollywood people - but it got almost no distribution. Most people think this was because it showed the Southern point of view in too good of a light! The town they used for Lawrence was one that got bought out because it always flooded. They trucked in dirt to cover the cement sidewalks/curbs/streets, and modified the fronts of the store buildings to fit back into the 1860's. And, since everything was going to be bulldozed anyway, they actually busted up and burned a bunch of the buildings for the filming.
Pharoh's Army shows a good snapshot of a couple days at a small frontier farm. Ride With The Devil shows the small-town family/friends/neighbors fighting their parts of the war in the counties along the border between North and South.
Gettysburg, Glory, etc. are good for big CW battles, Pharoh's Army and Ride With The Devil are good for the individual soldier/farmer/housewife one-on-one CW battles.
Just my humble thoughts to share. Take them as such.
Mike - still fighting some of those "battles" out here in the Hinterlands of the "fly over" states
