Worth seeing for the emotional sweep and impressive battle sequences that cover the somewhat basic characters (minor suggestive spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2006)

Coming from a family of wealthy Boston abolitionists, Robert Gould took the opportunity to rise through the ranks to command the Civil War's first all-black volunteer unit. Childhood friend Searless joins him as a private in the unit while the majority are slaves, seeking freedom and the chance to fight alongside the white soldiers. Although there is no real political will to see black soldiers on the battle field the unit's training begins while Gould struggles with prejudices and resistance from his superiors and peers as well as from within his own unit.
I approached this film with a certain amount of trepidation as I braced myself for a massive slice of sentimental revisionist pie. And in a way that is what this is but it somehow manages to stay just on the right side of things to make for an effective film. The plot pretty much writes itself as we go through training, see everyone learn lessons and eventually get to the final battle scene; saying it like this perhaps demeans the material but this is essentially what it is about. The script is weak when it comes to characters. Aside from Gould, the other characters in the regiment are all fictional and mostly they are stock characters that are mostly pigeonholed into easy slots. While this does weaken the depth of the material it does not limit the emotional sweep  which is pretty much what Zwick seems to be after. Lessons are learnt and characters formed and, although it is rather superficial it is engagingly professional.
A lot of the credit for this belongs with the actors who perform better than some of their material deserves. Broderick leads the cast well although at times he is all a bit too dignified and worthy. His support is better in the regiment, which includes a typically solid turn from Freeman (was he ever not the "old wise man" type?), Washington is fiery and engaging  a touch too modern perhaps but still with an effective performance. Elwes works well with Broderick and helps balance his character out a tad. Braugher shows the class that would later mark him out as being head and shoulders above his H:LOTS peers while the rest of the cast features turns from faces such as Gunton, Saunders and others. Zwick's direction in the battle scenes are impressive and it is depressingly convincing in how people are cut down. If I had one complaint it would be the sparing of main characters for the majority of the film; although I understand the cinematic reasons for this, it does rather undo the brutal and random nature of the violence. Having said that though, it is hard not to be impacting by the intense battles and the emotions of loss.
Overall then an impressive film even if it is not one that I think deserves the amount of unquestioning praise that is lavished upon it on these pages. It does have weak characters and it is a touch revisionist and sentimental but it more than makes up for this by producing an effective sweep of emotion, an engaging basic narrative and convincingly brutal battle sequences combine to produce a strong film that is worth seeing for what it does well.