Not an Award-Winning Film but Worth Seeing

Rating: 7/10 (29 November 2006)

This is a long movie and some of the acting leaves a lot to be desired -- see other reviewers' comments. However, the movie has some excellent performances by Jeff Daniels, Stephen Lang, Sam Elliott, and a few others.
In the DVD release, the Special Features, especially the Making of Gettysburg and the Commentary are top notch and give the viewer an even greater appreciation of the battles at Gettsburg and what is portrayed on screen in the movie.
The Battle of Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge in the film show the relentless human wave attacks that 20th century war buffs mostly associate with the Korean War and the Pacific campaign during WW II. However, GETTYSBURG conveys very well the disturbing reality that Civil War soldiers were killing relatives, friends, and neighbors in some of those battles and often in hand-to-hand combat.
Don't look for the pace of action or the graphic depiction of battle casualties to rival those seen in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN or BAND OF BROTHERS. What the battle scenes in this movie depict is the deadly toll of large scale frontal assaults by both the Union and Confederate forces. It defies all logic to think that hundreds of men (thousands in Pickett's Charge) would march in formation while lethal cannon shells explode in their midst and enemy marksmen fire deadly volleys of musket rounds into the advancing ranks of foot soldiers and cavalry troops. Yet, with the aid of a small robotic helicopter used to film Pickett's Charge and the massive artillery barrage that preceded it, the scale of the battle and the deadly outcome for the attacking Confederate Army are depicted vividly.
The futile but heroic plight of Pickett's men becomes apparent well before the attack even begins. These were some of our forefathers shedding their blood on that hallowed ground, and the film helps to show how costly that War of the States would be on the country's psyche for more than a century after the war ended.