Review of The Raid

I didn't expect much from this Civil War movie, set in Vermont(!), but the movie really delivered some great excitement. A group of Rebs were held prisoner in a POW jail in Plattsburgh, NY. They escape to Canada, not far away, and then decide to raid St. Albans, VT, also not far from the border. Their motives are to raise money for the Confederate cause by robbing the 3 banks, and to get revenge for Sherman's destruction of Savannah. All of the big male stars are bad guys--if you believe the lost cause was bad. Van Heflin has some redeeming qualities--he is kind to the boy, Tommy Rettig, and to Anne Bancroft in one of her earliest movies, as a local boarding- house owner and mother of the boy. (Her husband died in the war, fighting for the Union cause.) The excitement builds to a climax, but that may be an unsatisfying climax if you are a Unionist.