Strained Southern stresses and fake facial hair are the essential add-ins of Sean Mcnamara’s low-plan Civil War dramatization performing the occasions paving the way to and including 1864’s Battle of New Market. Showing what can magnanimously be portrayed as revisionist history and neglecting to match the effect of such also styled authentic shows as Gettysburg and Gods and Generals, Field of Lost Shoes feels strictly like little screen feed.
Other than in pockets of the Deep South and Virginia where it was recorded, the movies ought to match the destiny of the Confederacy.
The account allotment of Thomas Farrell and Dave Kennedy’s screenplay is bookended by footage of the Virginia Military Institute’s yearly function respecting its 10 cadets who died in the fight to protect the Shenandoah Valley against propelling Union powers.
The high school cadets were summoned to expand the decreasing the Southern armed force, here headed by previous U.s. VP John C. Breckinridge (Jason Isaacs).
Among their positions were John Wise (Luke Enward), the child of Governor Henry A. Savvy (John Rixey Moore), here incomprehensibly delineated as being abolitionism and against severance, and Moses Ezekiel (Josh Zuckerman), VMI’s first Jewish cadet who happened to turn into a praised stone carver.
The adage ridden storyline peculiarities such war film staples as a destined adoration story, with cadet Sam (Max Lloyd-Jones) getting to be miserably stricken with a neighborhood young lady (Mary Mouser) whose mother (Lauren Holly), when inquired as to whether an injured trooper is her child, answers, “They’re all my children.”
Tom Skerritt, decades excessively old for the part, plays Ulysses S. Award, while David Arquette, brandishing a shaggy mustache, shows up as an Union colonel who yells, “God favor the Pennsylvania young men, holding quick!”
Amazingly, none of the staunch Southerners appear to hold any negative emotions to blacks, guarding the Institute’s darling cook “Judge” (Keith David) from oppression and halting to protect a youthful slave lady caught under a fallen carriage.
The fight, which occurred on a sloppy field in which shoes surely were lost, is sensibly decently choreographed and taped, yet in any case fails to offer the energy of an ordinary Civil War reenactment.
Best saw as a reflexive notice for the admired military institute that is its center, Field of Lost Shoes doesn’t precisely score focuses for objectivity.