The Hunley [VHS]
Produced for Turner Network Television and originally broadcast in the summer of 1999,The Hunleyis a straightforward, engrossing historical drama focusing on a little-known chapter of the Civil War: the introduction of the submarine into American naval warfare off the shore of war-torn Charleston, South Carolina, in 1864. Writer-director John Gray had previously helmed the 1998 TV movieThe Day Lincoln Was Shot, and he has a knack for capturing the Civil War era with a heightened sense of authenticity, allowing for the dramatic license of mainstream television. Armand Assante plays Lieutenant Dixon, a traumatized soldier and grieving widower with just the right mixture of bravado and nihilism to skipper the C.S.S.Hunley--essentially an iron boiler cobbled into a hand-powered submersible weapon--with a volunteer crew of nine men who propel the crude sub in an effort to break the Union's coastal blockade. Donald Sutherland is superbly cast as Dixon's Confederate commander, General Beauregard, and the film's best scenes are those between Assante and Sutherland, playing two weary warriors with one final chance for victory. Otherwise, this is a very conventional film made with integrity but no particular flair, faithfully adhering to historical fact while establishing a solid supporting cast. Assante is guilty of moderate overacting, but he compensates with enough charisma to make his ill-fated command dramatically involving. Most effective is the sense of sheer bravery in the pioneering effort to prove theHunleyas a viable tool of war; the final scene within the sub is both haunting and dramatically intense. (Historical note: The C.S.S.Hunley--named after the drowned captain of a previous test vessel--was discovered intact off the coast of Charleston in 1995; efforts were later made to raise and restore this relic of naval history.)--Jeff Shannon