Daring Filmmaking

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 1999)

Amazing, engrossing. Never has a movie so long seemed to go by so quickly (for some). Very few epics like this are released theatrically these days, especially one that is four-plus hours like Gettysburg. Great movie, but has some difficulty balancing its impartial treatment of both the Union and Confederate causes. Martin Sheen makes a stocky Robert E. Lee, and Tom Berenger's Longstreet is a bit false, but both actors do well with these pivotal roles, as do Jeff Daniels and Sam Elliot on the Union side of this drama. The amazing, large-scale battle scenes and fascinating exploration of motives might bore today's modern audience, though, who have become used to having their historical movies served up as bloody spectacles in the Braveheart tradition or fictional farce like James Cameron's Titanic.