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.
