The Retrieval

Set during the American Civil War, this moving indie drama is centered on a 13-year-old black boy named Will (Ashton Sanders), who serves as a kind of Judas goat to a band of Southern bounty hunters tracking escaped slaves. Although Will is not technically their slave, he lives in fear of the men and his mercenary uncle (Keston John), who is all-too-willing to sacrifice Will for his own gain, and is therefore too cowed to escape when they are sent across enemy lines to lure Nate (Tishuan Scott)—a free man with a bounty on his head—back to the South and into the arms of the gang. As Nate becomes a father figure to the boy, Will struggles with his conscience. The high stakes of this situation—Will being an African-American child in the South during the Civil War, as well as an orphan under the control of an outlaw—frame an intimate coming-of-age story that plays out on a vast historical canvas. Director Chris Eska films his low-budget production against alternately lovely and desolate landscapes in the unnamed southern setting, with hints of the broader war delivered in a single battle scene that is more of a chaotic skirmish in the brush. Sanders brings both a nervous vulnerability and sincere yearning for connection to the central role of Will, while Scott is also effective as Nate, who slowly bonds with the boy in this provocative and affecting drama. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)