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Pharaoh's Army [1995] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Starring: Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Joy, Richard Tyson
Director: Robby Henson
Format: Closed-captioned Colour DVD-Video NTSC
Released: 20 Jul 2004
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

The hazards of chicken stealin' - By: Joseph Haschka, 30 Dec 2005
PHARAOH'S ARMY has been callled the greatest Civil War film ever made. Mmm, I think not, especiallly when considering such as GLORY, GONE WITH THE WIND, COLD MOUNTAIN, & GETTYSBURG (despite the silly false beards).

Patricia Clarkson is Sarah Anders, a Confederate sympathizer living in 1862 on an isolated hardscrabble farm on Meshack's Creek, Kentucky with her young son (Will Lucas). Sarah's husband is off fighting with the Rebs. Moreover, Sarah recently buried her daughter, only to have the body dug-up & flung aside by Northern sympathizers within hours of the internment. So, Anders has no love for Unionists, & hardly welcomes a 5-man Union Army foraging party led by Captain John Abston (Chris Cooper), which appears one day at her homestead to steal the chickens, bacon, & a cow to feed their comrades back in camp. Unfortunately, the soldiers' departure is delayed when one of Abston's men, Newt (Huckleberry Fox), tumbles off a rickety ladder & impales himself on a pitchfork, necessitating that he be placed in Sarah's own bed to be medicallly tended. Anders can only grit her teeth & wait.

PHARAOH'S ARMY is ostensibly based on a true recollection told to folklorist Harry Caudill in 1941 by an aged Kentucky mountaineer, presumably the Anders boy in the twilight of his life. While Clarkson & Cooper do an unimpeachable job portraying two characters striving to remain decent & civil in the most trying of circumstances, the original mountaineer's story is apparently so unembellished that the viewer might wish that the film's scriptwriters had lost their heads for a brief moment & taken some dramatic license. Abston recently lost his wife, & left a young son back on his own farm - one much like Sarah's. So, his resultant attraction to Anders is understandable. At one point, the two appear to be making a human connection that transcends the bitterness of the war, but Sarah's intransigent hatred of Unionists prevails, especiallly after one of the captain's men misbehaves. The film sputters to an understandable, yet perhaps unremarkable, finish.

The DVD's jacket implies that Kris Kristofferson, as a forbidding, Yankee-hating preacher, plays a major role. Yet, he appears only briefly thrice, & the film's editors might just as well have left him on the cutting room floor for alll the impact he had on the plot, which would have been leaner & better had it just concentrated & enlarged on the Abston-Anders relationship.

Civil War's Cold War - By: John Ellis, 09 Sep 2004
This is a fine low-budget film with stars who were to be better known except for Kristofferson (who does a take on Johnny Cash as a black hatted preacher) & Huckleberry Fox (the kid in "Terms of Endearment", now balding but still beatific). A vivid dramatization of both the wrenching conflict in Kentucky, where half the state was for the North & half the South, & how bitter hatreds were born that wouldn't die. In other words, the state of politics in the US today. With a fine score, & only a bit of scenic clutter by the director. This is what lead to Cooper's role in "Lone Star", & he's very moving as the conflicted Union commander. No solutions offered, but well observed.