Glory

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Buy This Item Glory by Sony Pictures Home Ent  Available from Amazon  $10.99  on 8-27-2008     One of the very best films about the Civil War, this instant classic from 1989 is also one of the few films to depict the participation of African American soldiers in Civil War combat. Based in part on the books <I>Lay This Laurel</I> by Lincoln Kirstein and <I>One Gallant Rush</I> by Peter Burchard, the film also draws from the letters of Robert Gould Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick), the 25-year-old son of Boston abolitionists who volunteered to command the all-black 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Their training and battle experience leads them to their final assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, where their heroic bravery turned bitter defeat into a symbolic victory that brought recognition to black soldiers and turned the tide of the war. With painstaking attention to historical detail and richness of character, the film boasts superior performances by Denzel Washington (who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, and Andre Braugher. Directed by Edward Zwick (co-creator of the TV series <I>thirtysomething</I>), this unforgettable drama is as important as <I>Schindler's List</I> in its treatment of a noble yet little-known episode of history. <I>--Jeff Shannon</I> Reader Reviews Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington share the spotlight in a great film. Full of heroes and villains, glory and tragedy, it is alternately violent (realistically - in terms of bloodshed) and tender, brutal and compassionate, emotionally charged and peaceful. I have never seen a film that shows the maturation of so many excellent characters amid so many struggles and battles - physical, emotional, civil, personal, all the great elements of film are there. I only wish they had shown a little more of the enemy (the South). The confederates are left out of it. Broderick's character, Robert Gould Shaw, starts out as a miraculously lucky tenderfoot, wrestles with his commitment to the war and to justice on social, civil, and human levels (that's what is so great about this film, the complexity and tightness of the plot). The development of Shaw's regiment, the 54th, is what occupies the film and emerges as its triumphant glory.

Glory Available from Amazon Price: $10.99 Updated on 8-27-2008.

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