Matthew McConaughey stars in this tedious film as one of the unsung heroes of the American Civil War

Newton Knight, a Confederate nurse who deserts his post and leads a rebellion for Jones County, Mississippi, to secede from the Confederacy and become an independent state.The movie, written and directed by Gary Ross (Hunger Games, Pleasantville) starts off bloody and violent, with horrific scenes of soldiers being gutted and blown apart.Knight's son gets drafted and after another bloody battle, is killed. Knight is now done "fighting for cotton" and wants to be able to farm and be free, and he wants everyone to be able to live their lives - "to reap what you sow".To avoid being hanged as a deserter and rabble-rouser, Knight lands up in a swamp where there are runaway slaves. He becomes the leader of the swamp, and one by one other war deserters join his cause. A sort of marshy Robin Hood gang forms and they take on the Confederate soldiers who are robbing poor farmers of their corn, their pigs, their sheets and their dignity. Besides his wife, Serena (Keri Russell), his love interest is Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) - a slave who helps him to run away from the soldiers. He teaches her how to read and write. Eventually they have a child. Fast forward to the 1940s when one of their descendants is on trial for miscegenation in Mississippi.The film becomes an overlong, tiresome, badly taught history lesson - one that tries too hard but doesn't delve into any of the deeper issues. • 'Free State of Jones' is on circuit...