AllMovie

Made for the TNT cable channel, this lengthy docudrama records the harrowing conditions at the Confederacy's most notorious prisoner-of-war camp. The drama unfolds through the eyes of a company of Union soldiers captured at the Battle of Cold Harbor, VA, in June 1864, and shipped to the camp in southern Georgia. A private, Josiah Day (Jarrod Emick), and his sergeant (Frederic Forrest) try to hold their company together in the face of squalid living conditions, inhumane punishments, and a gang of predatory fellow prisoners called the Raiders. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, the Massachusetts men help to put an end to the Raiders' activities. With the permission of the camp's commandant, Captain Wirz (Jan Triska), the Raiders are tried by their peers (with newly arrived prisoners as the impartial jury) and punishment is meted out. The men eagerly greet each new batch of arrivals to the overcrowded camp, hoping to hear some news of prisoner exchange, but as the months drag on and more of the men succumb to disease, that hope begins to flicker.