I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Really Surprised!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Passionately acted film about a man who returns from the Civil War a very different person, and is soon suspected of being an impostor. Richard Gere, Jodie Foster and Bill Pullman all give strong performances in a film highlighted by Phillippe Rousselot's marvelous cinematography (he won an Academy Award for his work on "A River Runs Through It").But for all its intrigue and mystery, very well handled by director Jon Amiel, the climax may well baffle some. One has to wonder what motivates a man to act in such a way. Perhaps he was looking to atone for his past. A moving and worthwhile drama.Sunday, June 27, 1993 - Village Centre Melbourne

Regarding the use of a Black Judge..During "Radical Reconstruction: the USA put Black's in power to point out the South lost..This backfired and led to the Jim Crow laws and to the racial strife lasting longer..A gentler and milder form of reconstruction would have work better.. I believe the film was able to obtain its goal of suspended belief...The part which I found most difficult was his giving up his life..he must have felt it is better to die for something good than to live with something bad..Of course, if applied to the war itself this fits assuming the South winning the Civil War would fit something bad as an outcome. Thus, the movie conveyed the times even to the clothing which in the case of Foster was done quite well. My only minor concern was the War was only 4 years long which does not fit with Jack being gone 6 years and dying in 1867..

Almost every time Hollywood cribs from foreign classics to make a bad imitation with an American setting it's like making French gourmet cuisine with a Mickey Dee mentality. Not as much of a disaster as Paul Newman in THE OUTRAGE, it's just simply that the remake lacks the gusto that made the original special. The same rule applies to current remakes of Hollywood classics. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is highly respected only because almost nobody back then had the chance to see Kurasawa's original SEVEN SAMURAI; high on the list of 250 all time great films. Anticipate disaster with this year's release of the KING KONG "remake."

It would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. A man returns home after a six-year absence caused by the Civil War. He's the same man, and yet not the same. He's been taking lessons from Deepak Chopra or somebody because whereas before his departure he was a scumbag he has now turned into a populist hero of the Frank Capra brand. Is he an impostor? If so, why? And why doesn't the wife he comes home to recognize it? Why doesn't the entire VILLAGE see that he's a different guy? Six years isn't so long. When I look in the mirror I see the same Adonis I was six years ago, as good as ever. Better even.The most interesting features of this movie would have turned on the mystery of the new Sommersby trying to adjust to the life of the old. Yes, he's kinder, and maybe a better lover, and his shoe size seems to have changed. But that's about it.The bulk of the movie deals with a kind of love triangle between Richard Gere as Sommersby, Jody Foster as his wife, and Bill Pullman as a neighbor who had hoped to take Sommersby's place after a suitable period.We have to sit through scenes of Gere and Foster falling more deeply in love, and learning to trust each other (and then not trusting, and then trusting again, and then not trusting, and finally trusting again). I hope that came out right. I was a little confused after a while.The courtroom scene, in which Sommersby is charged with murdering someone, REALLY was confusing. A witness is brought in who claims to have know Gere when he was not Sommersby but somebody named Horace or something. This other Gere was a con man who pretended to be someone else, insinuate himself into the trust of his new community, gather up all their treasure for an economic venture -- maybe getting a town belle preggers -- and then take off, leaving them flat.And then -- well, I don't think I'll divulge the conclusion of the story here because I still don't know what the conclusion is. I THINK Gere is actually Horace and that Horace killed the original Sommersby, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.Nothing wrong with the performances or the direction. The music is a little soupy, the photography surprisingly fuzzy and unsunny, and the plot as murky as a pot o' skoosh.I suspect the audience could have swallowed that initial implausibility -- Gere posing as a non-Gere after such a short absence -- if it had led to further curious incidents casting doubt on his identity. Not just the shrunken shoe size. The writers could have thrown in a shrunken hat size as well. Or his wife might have noticed something about him at night. Well -- let that go. Yes. All in all, it would have been a great Twilight Zone without all that love and intrigue being impastoed all over it. I didn't care for it. It seems too slow. But it has enough redeeming features that I can understand why some people might feel differently.