This is a true story… It began on the night of September 26, 1864, in a Union prison stockade at Plattsburg, New York, not many miles from the Canadian border.

Fregonese’s fact based US Civil War film, chronicling a confederate soldier’s infiltration of a small town in Vermont as he prepares to sack it, complicated by his meeting of an attractive young widow, is, with its excellent performances and uncompromising scripting, a thrilling yet intelligent examination of the ambiguities of war and human relationships. — Iain Stott