Aims more for authenticity than sensationalism

The quietly effective Men Go to Battle confronts the harsh realities of surviving poverty and the battlefield during the Civil War. It’s meandering structure could benefit from more concise storytelling but is striking for how its characters come nowhere near the well-worn dramatized cliches of wartime masculinity. Two brothers living together on their family land in Small’s Corner, Kentucky eke out a lonely existence. Their plain lives are complicated and surprisingly bolstered by the war. The film firmly stays away from gratuitous violence and sex in favor of showing the more mundane daily aspects of war and work. It has more in common with the sorrowful walking and cavernous silences of Terrence Malick films than it does with sweeping epics like Minghella’s Cold Mountain or Glory. We don’t see raw emotions or heroic deeds but people worn down by years of disappointment and manual labor. Men Go to Battle is admirable if not entirely engaging on a consistent basis as we examine a dour journey of self-discovery. http://www.cutprintfilm.com/reviews/men-go-to-battle/