Civil Love (Video 2012)

Civil Love: Directed by Bryan Carzan. With Matthew Bellows, Joshua Bendoski, Bryce Bishop, B.J. Christianson. Rachel is a widow during the Civil War who holds the South responsible for her husband’s death. When a wounded enemy soldier takes refuge in her barn, Rachel reluctantly helps him. As she gets to know him more, she realizes she must protect him from the dangerous men pursuing him, and discovers a courage she didn’t know she had – the courage to love again.

“Civil Love probably is a bad title for this story about a Union widow and a Confederate prisoner on the run. In those days it might indicate living together without benefit of clergy and in those days people did marry in the church for the most part.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eElise Groves whose husband was killed in the war is doing her level best to keep the family farm running and raising her daughter and son. One day Paul Hunt comes into their lives and heu0026#39;s wounded and running from a pair of bounty hunters who say they are US Marshals. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAt first reluctant to take in one of the enemy Hunt does prove useful around the place and the inevitable happens. Thereu0026#39;s also Marshal Bellows around for a rival and heu0026#39;s both the brother of Groves late husband and the local sheriff. He has some feelings himself for Groves and that kind of interferes with his judgment.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe film was shot on a dental floss budget, but the acting is decent enough from a bunch of players you never heard of. The rural area is suggestive of 19th century America.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWe never know exactly where this takes place. Hunt mentions escaping from a northern prison in New York. That would be Elmira which was a Union prison. Conditions there were little better than the infamous Andersonville and Libby Prisons in the South. That fact does kind of ground the film historically so to speak.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eCivil Love despite its title is a decent enough film for family viewing.”