Gods & Generals | Stephen Lang, Robert Duvall | Action, Drama, Romance-an authentic tale of valor

Gods & Generals | Stephen Lang, Robert Duvall | Gods and Generals

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Gods & Generals

	Gods & Generals Stephen Lang, Robert Duvall Warner Home Video, 2003 average customer review:based on 731 reviews view larger image
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Action, Drama, Romance-an authentic tale of valor

WOW. Until Gods and Generals I despaired to believe that anyone anywhere could somehow make a decent Civil War movie. The Vietnam War had its Platoon. The American Revolution had its Patriot (although it was no Brave Heart) and World War II had its Saving Private Ryan.
Yes, we've seen films such as Glory. Glory--great action scenes to be sure and Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington were amazing. Yet, it was one sided.
Who walked out of the theater after viewing Glory knew that two years before the black 54th Mass regiment was mustered in the north, there were free black volunteer units serving for the South, one including the 1st LA? (Not to mention the 90,000 other free African Americans who served and died in the Southern armies.
Glory was like...making a movie about the horrors of Nazi Germany without including the holocaust or a movie about the old west without including Native Americans. You shouldn't make a movie based on historical events if you plan to hack a truth in half. The 54th Mass had its 15 moments of fame...when will the 90,000 black soldiers of the South get theirs?
Blue & Gray and even Gettysburg was more fiction than historical. In the movie Gettysburg there is a scene of a runaway slave being liberated in the 20th Maine's camp. It never happened. However there are both testimonies and written accounts of free black Confederate soldiers in Gettysburg, one of which Lt. Colonel Fremantle (who was portrayed in the movie) had written about in his book after the Civil War.
Then came Gods and Generals. Based on the reviews I've seen, most people think the truth sucks. Stonewall Jackson, the great SOUTHERN general recruits and befriends a black citizen named Jim Lewis. Throughout the movie the Southern characters proclaim their cause is not slavery but independence. How many of you cringed when Lee's character quoted to Blair's character his understanding of the Northern cause stating, "I never thought I would see the day when the goverment would raise an army to invade its own country." Boy, this pissed off some PC pukes and some other views naive to true history.
It may piss them off even more to know that Jim Lewis was a real Confederate soldier. Or...that nearly every account written by a Confederate soldier on why he enlisted was to defend that state and secure its independence, just as the movie told. Who would question that the armies from the Northern states invaded the Southern states. Battle of Manassas,VIRGINIA. HELLO. Many of you may have had ancestors who had been POWs in Japan or Vietnam or Germany. Three of my ancestors were POWS in... Chicago, ILLINOIS.
Furthermore, every major speech in the movie spoken by Jackson's character was historically to the T.
My advice to the critics who shammed this movie--shut up. Gods and Generals was the most unique experience in your movie-viewing lives because you actually learned something.
Truth aside, I loved it! Where Gettysburg and Glory used women less than even as extras but more as props, Gods and Generals provided the screen with beautiful and talented women in leading and dramatic roles.
Where in the series', Blue & Gray or North & South the battle scenes looked as deadly and real as local cable wrestling, Gods and Generals provided us with three of the Civil War's most explosive battles that included thousands of actual CW reenactor extras, sound effects, and visual effects. I was blown away.
Lastly, where other CW movies centered on childhood history book poster boys, Gods and Generals blessed us with not only the most well known heroes of that time but also their deep, dark, and dramatic personal stories and emotions. Also featured were the unsung heroes. Again, remember Jim Lewis.
Even the sound track blew me away. The music lifts a spiritualness in your deepest core.
Gods and Generals is a lovely movie. Because of the movie's amazing historical backgrounds, battle scenes, and larger than life (but very alive) characters, I recommend it to everyone.
The images, the roles, and the story are powerful and beautiful. True story.

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Gods and Generals

A need to study for background would be helpful, for there is LOTS of historical information in this movie! I found myself riveted to the screen, totally fascinated! (and I am NOT a history buff!) Refreshingly without foul language, this movie accurately portrays the lives of General Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson, plus introducing other officers, from just before the Civil War began, up to Gettysburg.

Wildly overambitious

Ironies abound: while Gettysburg was made for television but ended up with a theatrical release, yet despite a $60m budget, a huge cast and being shot in 2.35:1 widescreen, Gods and Generals looks like it would have been more at home on TV. In some ways it's almost the most expensive home movie ever shot, with Ted Turner paying for this account of the early years of the American Civil War out of his own pocket. For the first hour it's almost as if the Union never existed, the film shown entirely from the Southern side, and with a very partisan view at that (all down to Yankee aggression, with Fort Sumpter conveniently dismissed in a single line). Too often lengthy quotations take the place of dialogue and even the better actors in the cast often seem ill at ease while the surprisingly weak daylight photography and poor CGi matte painting in early scenes giving it an air of storybook unreality. Indeed, Ronald Maxwell's approach at times seems pure D.W. Griffith, with a fondness for awkward tableaux and unconvincing sentiment (poor Mira Sorvino gets a couple of particularly painfully hearts-and-flowers scenes to deliver as a consolation prize for missing out on playing Joan of Arc when Maxwell's version was dropped in the wake of Luc Besson's film). There are a few moments here and there - an intimate scene between Stonewall Jackson and his wife confiding his doubts, a scene between Jeff Daniels and Kevin Conway's sergeant about friends on the other side - but as the over-ambitious film tries to cram too much history into its four hour running time (and still scenes filmed dealing with Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth and the Battle of Antietem didn't make the cut) the people just get lost.

Thankfully, the second half rallies considerably as the film reaches the Battle of Fredericksburg and the 20th Maine's disastrous charge, and the contradictions in Stephen Lang's "Stonewall" Jackson, a deeply religious man yet one who advocated taking no prisoners, become more interesting despite the film's determination to turn him into across between Jesus Christ and a vengeful Old Testament prophet. Yet sadly the lasting impression is of a film that is too sprawling and unfocussed for its own good and one that not only either needed to be a lot longer or a lot shorter but also much better written. As for the somewhat nonsensical title, it's an abbreviation of the novel's Faith in Gods and Generals. Incidentally, be warned that the DVD has one of the worst side breaks ever. Some fairly decent DVD extras, but the lack of deleted scenes implies a director's cut may be in the offing some time in the future.

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