Frankly, I expected more

Rating: 6/10 (10 October 2005)

Since the movie came out, I haven't heard much anything but good things about it. Therefore, I was surprised by how mediocre a movie it really is.
It is understandable that Holleywood could not present the historical events without serious simplifications. How else could the American public understand it. Blacks are fighting for their freedom with pure hearts. The only trouble maker is just angry at the world and settles down before the end. The whites are either assholes or enlightened moral men with iron back bone. This is so far from real life it makes me puke.
Let me first tell you what annoyed me about the movie: at the time when American government is more than ever using blatant violence to secure their own interests around the world, this kind of glorification of war and killing sickened me. If the American civil war really had been about values I might excuse it, but it was not. It was about cotton, molasses and grain. Southern states had it, northerners didn't. That's what the blacks were fighting for, not their freedom.
The men they were killing weren't their true enemies, for the most part. Just a bunch of other poor folks. There is no Glory in war. Just killing and dying with more or less bravery, but glory, no.
As normally in war movies, dieing was too clean. War is not clean. The bullet rarely seeks the heart. Slaying someone with a bayonet certainly is not clean and bloodless.
I am not squeamish. I like a good action movie, even a splatter once in a while, but they are not serious. Glory took itself much too seriously to be a mindless action movie.
The movie could have been so much more. There were elements for great drama in there, but the writing took all the short cuts available to it. Such pity.
Why did I then give it as much as 7/10? Because Glory is not a bad movie, just a disappointment.