This greater than two-hour drama recreates the trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia. It has an amazing cast of prominent stars of the time, some of whom are quite recognizable, such as Alan Hale as a member of the jury who doesn't even have any lines, and relatively unknown at the time, Charlie Sheen, who only has one line as a soldier.
William Shatner has the largest role as prosecutor and, contrary to his general reputation, does not over-emote but instead pretty much nails the role. He struggles with duty versus conscience, as the crux of his moral argument is that Wirz should have disobeyed direct orders and done more to care for the prisoners in his charge, but then no military tribunal of the time would agree that it is ever acceptable to disobey orders and it would be career suicide to directly argue such a thing. Wirz is played by Richard Basehart, who I've always found to be an underrated actor. Jack Cassidy is the attorney for the defense, Otis Baker, who is a Confederate sympathizer and wishes to point out the hypocrisy of the situation - Confederate prisoners under the care of the Union died in terrible circumstances as well - but he gets shut down by the judge in the situation, played by Cameron Mitchell, who is bombastic in temperament but fair.
The entire play is set inside the courtroom, lasts two and a half hours, and besides being a showcase of very good acting and instructive on Civil War history, it indicates how much longer of an attention span audiences must have had 55 years ago. Public TV would never attempt something of this length in this format today.
George C. Scott, the director, got a very authentic performance out of William Shatner, who could ordinarily be quite stiff. In retrospect, perhaps Scott should have directed a few episodes of Star Trek.
