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A little-known chapter of American history gets a respectful but choppy treatment in the Civil War drama "Free State of Jones."
In 1862, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight (Matthew McConaughey) works as a medic in a Confederate Army hospital camp. Frustrated that rich Southern slaveowners are able to avoid the draft — "poor man's fight in a rich man's war" — he heads home to Jones County, forced to hide in the nearby swamp with runaway slaves. Knight builds up a small army, black and white, that rebels against the Rebels and declares itself a free state against the Confederacy.
Director/screenwriter Gary Ross ("The Hunger Games") and McConaughey paint Knight as a backwater freedom fighter and folksy inspirational speaker, with a focus on his romance with Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a plantation house slave.
In the film's second half, as the war ends and Reconstruction begins, the narrative flow falls apart as Ross resorts to title-card historical markers and a 1940s subplot involving one of Knight's descendants. The movie's final hour feels more like a Wikipedia entry than a rousing heroic tale.
'Free State of Jones'
Opens Friday, June 24, at theaters everywhere; rated R for brutal battle scenes and disturbing graphic images; 139 minutes.