Magnificent. Beautifully made, soberingly presented. Will become a classic.

Rating: Null/10 (13 November 1998)

I have just one regret about "Gettysburg": I've never seen it on a big screen. This is filmmaking at its exquisite best, with gorgeous cinematography, thoughtful design, marvelous performances, brilliant execution from the grand sweep down to the merest detail, and a score that moves my heart up into my throat every time I listen to it.
Nowhere else have I seen such chillingly and hauntingly REAL battle scenes; it's more than just making it look right, you have to make it FEEL right, and "Gettysburg" feels more like a documentary than a commercial blockbuster. Even the forced-seeming speeches, about which some viewers complain, are right - they really did talk that way in the 1860s, except that their phrasing was actually more stilted than we in the 1990s can sink our teeth into. And the peaceful interludes do just what's needed to set the horror into perspective. (Maybe it also helps that I've stood in the Devil's Den and seen the sweep of the killing ground over which Pickett's Charge advanced.)
I'm not sure a better cast could possibly have been assembled. "Magnificent" is too weak to do justice to their moving performances. Richard Jordan's tearful soliloquy as Armistead, in Longstreet's tent; the stricken look on Stephen Lang's face when, as Pickett, he cries "General Lee, I *have* no division"; the calm and thoughtful - and totally characteristic - way Jeff Daniels delivers Chamberlain's speech to the men of the 2nd Maine, these are hallmark moments of the art of the motion picture.
Everyone is costumed and equipped with complete, and accurate, attention to detail. Except for the beard on Tom Berenger - the real Longstreet's beard was pretty scraggly.
This is probably one of a very few films whose producers really listened to their extras (several thousand re-enactors) and changed the way they were doing things to "get it right." The worst gaffe in the entire film, from a Civil War addict's point of view, might be that the artillery barrage preceding Pickett's Charge starts at the left of the Confederate line and runs to the right. It actually went the other way. When they get things that close to right, I cannot help being tremendously impressed.