I didn't mind the length.

Rating: 9/10 (4 March 2008)

Its length not for everyone hence I recommend watching it in increments as opposed to me who can watch it in its entirety, hardly tearing myself away from it, in one afternoon. Events inside those three days would be poorly depicted if they did less an hour for each one. The length of this film is for a reason.
The reasons I love "Gettysburg" includes but nowhere limited to: 1) It goes by the days and is very authentic in terms of detail of encampments and technology of the opposing sides. Many cast members' make-up is so good as to make that actor unrecognizable. The best example in terms of the actor made unrecognizable by makeup is Tom Berrenger as Longstreet. Martin Sheen I can still recognize despite his add-ons to make him look like R.E. Lee but he more than makes up in his portrayal of that pivotal general. I don't know if I'll ever be able to accept another actor as General Lee but Martin Sheen; he's that riveting.
2) Its action flows with the day to day pulse of a soldier's life; both eventful and not. To describe it I'll paraphrase a quote from portion of the Ken Burns documentary of same Civil War (forget the particular episode): "There were times of great tedium between moments of extreme terror." No 2 scenes captures the "terror" better in "Gettysburg" than Chamberlain's army's defending their section on Day 2 and Pickett's Charge.
3) As opposed to other historical films there's very little Hollywood distorting of history. As far as I see, except for J.L.Chamberlain's character,none of the rest of the major roles receives no major Hollywood rewrite. The real J. L. Chamberlain was fighting mostly for the union preservation, not for the slaves freedom but as the writers needed someone to bring the slavery was wrong angle so they picked his character. While the change to Chamberlain is inaccurate, I can see why it was done. Indeed I became interest in Chamberlain's life because of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary and this film.
4) The Hancock/Armistead sad, ironic subplot is poignantly underplayed and in terms of the situation is historically accurate.
5) I think it includes plenty of refreshingly funny moments to alleviate any possible heavy-handedness: Tom Chamberlain's chat with the confederate POVs; The Chamberlain Brothers' interacting in the film's first hour; the government guy from Virginia talking to the British visitor about State's Rights. I give the highest comedy commendations to Pickett in every scene before his charge, General Trimble talking to Lee about another officer the former felt was incomptent. I don't know why to this day but Sam Elliot's 1st 5 minutes as Bufford just cracks me up; it just does.
Finally I would be remiss if I didn't mention this film's excellent movie score as one of the best I've seen in any war film.