Union Bound

In the fall of 1864, two Union soldiers escape from a Confederate POW camp and try to make their way to safety behind Union lines, getting help along the way from slaves longing for their own freedom. This low-budget historical drama (reportedly based on the diary of a real Civil War veteran) swings back and forth between being earnestly amateurish and comically inept, with its ragged, starving, war-ravaged characters played mostly by well-fed, neatly groomed people in spotlessly laundered Civil War re-enactor get-ups. No director is named, but the credit “A Harvey Lowry Film” suggests he’s to blame for the clumsy staging and the gaping, endless pauses between writer John Errington’s stilted lines of dialogue. The actors, all unknown, seem to mean well, so we won’t blame them by name for the results. J.L.