A 19th Century Story Told In A 20th Century Manner

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2013)

I just came on to this page to comment on GLORY and noticed that it had dropped out of the IMDb list of top 250 films which isn't something that upsets me too much . I saw it once many years ago and my abiding memory of it was it contained some very impressive battle scenes but the rest of it was " Hollywood History " complete with historical relativism that was viewed with 20th Century eyes . Seeing it again my initial instincts were confirmed
We get a pre title caption stating Robert Gould Shaw was 23 years old when he enlisted in to the Union Army and regularly wrote to his parents telling them of life in the Army of Potomac . The story then revolves around the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry , the first unit of the US army to be composed of black men . So far so good but you're left with the feeling that screenwriter Kevin Jarre browsed through Colonel Shaw's letters he wrote back home and then invented his own characters and situations . I've not read any of Shaw's letters so can't contradict what may or may not have happened but not for one moment did I get the impression I was watching characters from mid 19th Century America . In fact I found the characters totally stereotypical and one note such as the stammering black man , the bolshie black man , the intelligent black man and of course when a bunch of black men get together they've got perfect singing voices down to natural rhythm . By having a rather patronisingly liberal view of 19th Century blacks one can't help thinking the film is in danger of offensive on the grounds of inverse racism as much as overt racism would be . Didn't these characters have minds of their own , opinions of their own ? There's also a distinct lack of politics but I guess if you're making a film about a war to end slavery in America it's a bad idea to mention politics . I mean Lyndon B Johnson probably did more for Black America than all the previous American Presidents combined
Most of the cast rise above the rather mediocre material . Denzil Washington probably gives a career best performance and of course any movie featuring Morgan Freeman is worth watching . The problem is that these good performances show up Matthew Broderick as being out of his depth and he seems to spend most of the film with a perplexed look on his face but this might be understandable since the film feels more 20th Century than 19th and he possibly thinks he's a time traveler . That said the battle scenes remain quite well done and deserve credit , not least because the rest of the film is so anachronistic in feel the temptation to have a fleet of Huey helicopter gunships dropping napalm might have remained a possibility