Very, very disappointing... a Waste of Time.

Rating: 1/10 (4 December 2006)

Hi - I just rented this the other day. And I must say without reservations that this is one of the worst war movies ever made. I thought that with Ted Turner's backing that something halfway decent would result out of this production, but I'm sorry to say it didn't. I majored in the Cinema at the University of Maryland in 1986. I am also a military history buff, and I have seen 100s of war movies in my 42 short years on this planet. I try to see as many good ones as possible, because I have a life and don't want to waste time. I can't even believe my eyes when people put this in their top-10 list, any top-10 list!! 'Best Civil War' movie yet?!! Did anyone of you see 'Glory'?!!! 'Glory' is far superior drama to this film. In fact, any scene from "Glory" is infinitely better than any scene in this film. God, I had to turn off 'Gettysburg' after a few scenes. A lot of scenes are simply pedantic, and they assume that all the viewers are history morons who don't know jack about the battle. In terms of drama, or lack thereof, let's all remember the scene where Colonel Chamberlain (one of the pivotal figures in the Civil War), takes on those rag-tag, near deserters near the beginning. Where is the drama?! Where is the conflict? The film is simply rampant with a lot of melodramatic scenes such as this. Most of the battle scenes look like they were made by high-school film crew; they lack any suspense, build-up, and suffer from awful direction and editing. The acting is so-so, but these talented actors were burdened with such a mediocre script. If you want to study an excellent war movie script, just download 'Saving Private Ryan'... Again, there is more depth in one scene of that film than this entire movie. The only thing this film has going for it is A) Talented actors and B) Half-way decent production values.