War Flowers

If you are looking for a CIVIL WAR extravaganza (The Patriot) with all kinds of CGI battle scenes, or an overblown romance (Gone With the Wind), this won't be the movie for you. It is a simple family romance with a Civil War backdrop. I found it touching, especially the little girl, seven year old Melody played by Gabrielle Popa. The cinematography and story are beautifully muted. For whatever reason I got the same feeling from the movie that I do from early Little House on the Prairie episodes.

One or more of the reviews complains that the acting by Cristina Ricci and the little girl Gabrielle Popa was horrible. For the first ten minutes or so I might have agreed but as I became comfortable with movement of the plot I found that I loved Melody's character. She was a smart, strong little girl character and as far away from many of today's glitzy charismatic child stars as can be. I loved her plainness, her questions, and the sadness she felt while hiding the sadness she felt.

Anyway, I have a feeling that if you like family drama/romance and remember Little House on the Prairie fondly, War Flowers will be a soft, enjoyable hour and a half.

This film tells the story of a young woman and her daughter living in a farm house, waiting for the man of the house to return from the civil war.

I am rather surprised by how bad "War Flowers" is. The opening battle scene is supposed to be impressive, but it gives me the impression that it is a bad made for TV movie. The story is slow and quite uneventful, maybe it is because they are in a very small town where nothing happens. Then, an enemy soldier arrives and turns things upside down. The romance is so unbelievable and poorly built up, that I find it ridiculous that they would fall for each other. Another poorly constructed storyline is the daughter talking about how the father would come back. And another annoying thing is that people talk so slowly in the film that it doesn't even sound realistic. Poor Christina Ricci, she has starred in more than her fair share of bad movies in recent years. I hope her next film will be better!

During the second half of the Civil War, a mother (Christina Ricci) and her precocious daughter await the return of their husband/father at their farmhouse in North Carolina. Meanwhile they have to fend with a local ne'erdowell, skirmishes, a questionable Confederate patrol and a wounded Union soldier found in their basement (Jason Gedrick). Tom Berenger has a peripheral role as a Union general.

Written & directed by Serge Rodnunsky, "War Flowers" (2012) is an Indie that some have criticized as having a student film vibe with some help from (very convincing) Civil War re-enacters. It's shot kinda stagily and edited using dissolves for many cuts. Meanwhile a few shots don't match each other colorwise.

These technical criticisms are valid due to an obvious low-budget, which reportedly cost $5 million with the bulk of it spent on the impressive cast and Civil War Reenactors, BUT the film does work on the most important level, that of storytelling. My wife & I saw it separately and we both enjoyed it: The story pulls you in and maintains your interest until the end with convincing acting by the principles. It's vital that a film like this have human interest (otherwise it's a lost cause) and it scores well in this area.

The movie runs 1 hour, 39 minutes, and was shot in Michigan.

GRADE: B-/B

For an American civil war drama, then "War Flowers" was not a particularly impressive one. It was every bit as slow and long-dragged as it was uneventful and interesting.

Yeah, harsh words, but truthful words.

And the movie started out so nicely with a good amount of action and confrontation on the battlefield between the Union and Confederate troops. But after that scene it just went steeply downhill fast.

I managed to suffer through just a bit more than one hour through this unfathomably slow-paced movie before I was ready to surrender to either the Confederate or the Union troops, whomever had an available pistol for putting myself out of the misery and ordeal that was "War Flowers".

The story in "War Flowers" is about a southern woman living with her daughter under fairly poor circumstances, as they are waiting for the man of the house to return back from the front lines. When a small skirmish break out where they live, they come to find that a Union soldier has taken refuge in their basement. Wounded but conscious, the man poses no threat and they nurture him back to health.

Right, potentially the storyline could have been interesting, but director Serge Rodnunsky managed to claw onto anything even remotely looking like progress and holding it back in strict reins. This movie was literally taking forever to go from nowhere to nowhere, and it was was quite an ordeal to manage to suffer through an hour of it. And I can honestly say that I am not going to return to "War Flowers" in order to finish the movie and see how it ends. I just couldn't care less about the characters in the movie, nor the storyline itself.

The only actor I knew in this movie was Tom Berenger, and even he seemed to be tired and just wanting to get this over with. "War Flowers" was not his finest moment, not by a long shot.

If you enjoy American civil war movies, then stay well clear of "War Flowers", because it just isn't worth the time or the effort.

I am rating it a meager, but very generous, three out of ten stars.

The only reason to watch this movie was Tom Beringer, but his minor role wasn't important, just lame. One should skip this movie as everything about it is poorly done. Bad directing, silly plot, bad acting, poor photography, reenactment vololunteers doing fake fighting and cannon shooting with no element of war emotions, just going through the weekend motions.

Below low budget quality movie. Worse than a student film.