The Raid (1954)

The Raid (1954)


Plot Summary

A group of Confederate prisoners escape to Canada and plan to rob the banks and set fire to the small town of Saint Albans in Vermont. To get the lie of the land, their leader Neal Benton (Van Heflin) spends a few days in the town and finds he is getting drawn into its life and especially into that of an attractive widow named Katy Bishop (Anne Bancroft) and her son.

This is a very simple and unpretentious movie but deceptively so as there's quite a bit to unpack from it. One of things this flick has going for it is the cast as a movie like this acted by a no name cast would lose some of its impact. Van Heflin plays the title role of Maj. Neal Benton who along with a group of fellow Confederate soldiers escape from a Union prison and escape to Montreal. Among those in the group are Lee Marvin and Peter Graves. The group meets up with a larger group and Benton formulates a plan to loot, rob and burn down the small town of St. Albans, Vermont. This would be the first of such raids whose goal is to divert Union forces north to ease the pressure down there as well as be revenge for Sherman's March through Georgia.

Benton first goes to scout out the city and meets Katy Bishop (Anne Bancroft) and the rest of the community including a former Union soldier named Foster (Richard Boone) who lost his arm in the war.

Now this is where you got some very interesting little things that would've been lost with an unknown cast. We get a great sequence as Benton goes into town for the first time. He clearly has a disgust toward the Union but had to suppress it so that he can pass himself off as Canadian but we see very early on in the train station a soldier who lost a leg drops something and can't pick it up, Benton is right next to him but doesn't do a thing which elicits the ire of one of the station people who yells "what's wrong with you, are you paralyzed?!". We then see Benton run into a recruiter who has quite a bit to say about the Rebels which has Benton steaming under his collar.

Benton is posing as a Canadian banker/financier so he goes to the bank and meets up with the owner Josiah Anderson (wonderfully played by character actor Will Wright) and the two seem to hit it off though there is some tension at first what with Benton rationalizing the profiteering of war then we end up hearing how things are going in the war what with Sherman's March and you could tell that Benton is none too pleased to hear all this.

So that's the basic setup of the movie and here we get some interesting byplay from the characters. Foster is embittered and thinks Benton isn't so great because he's profiting from war while there's a chemistry and attraction between Benton and Bishop. It doesn't hurt that the son Larry looks up to Benton and thinks he's the greatest. Benton tries to keep himself at arm's length emotionally but he can't help but become invested in, and caring for the community. He quickly becomes a respected citizen. We then see him going back to Montreal to plot out the raid. Keating (Marvin) wants to completely burn the place to a crisp and kill everyone while Benton tries to make it clear that this is just the first of such raids and they can't go all crazy. He then has his troops sneak into town so that they can attack in three days.

Lee Marvin is at his villainous best here as a blood thirsty soldier who questions Benton's motives for going easy on the townsfolk and when a parade ruins the raid he disappears from the group going on a bender and then beating a Union soldier to death. This leads to a scene during a church service where the pastor basically damns the confederates to hell as Keating goes crazy killing someone and then shouting about killing the pastor and everyone else Benton decides to kill Keating as he's a total liability. This turns him into a hero of course and he further becomes a part of the community which makes having to go through with the raid all the more hard to do.

I will say this, this movie eschews the party line of "all confederates are evil" that was part of Hollywood tellings of Civil War stories. Instead, what we get is a very nuanced and balanced approach to the subject. In one scene when talking about the war with Katy he asks her if she lived in the south being an innocent bystander to Sherman's wrath would she understand why they (the south) would want to fight back just as vigorously? She never really answers but I THINK that's the message of this movie. It's to make people think what it would be like if you were in their shoes. Of course, the way war is presented here, it's a matter of honor and deeply personal rather than the history book version of States rights and slavery.

The cast really does a great job here and while I didn't talk much about Richard Boone let's just say his character wasn't as heroic as you might think from someone losing an arm. He has a complexity and goes through personal growth in this movie where at the end he's a fully fleshed out person. This movie is very pedestrian in moving the plot to the point that it's almost a procedural but there are a couple scenes here and there that add a flourish with a lesser cast it would be a bit boring. The dialogue isn't even all that great either but lo and behold Van Heflin carries himself well here and you see his inner turmoil of wanting to do his duty but in such as way as not to harm Katy and her family or anyone really.

In the end this was a very good little film and features an ending you normally don't get in these kind of movies. I give this ** 1/2 stars.