One of the best war movies ever made

Rating: 10/10 (23 February 2017)

Edward Zwick's "Glory" is the best war movie that he directed and one that to me that is even better than his "The Last Samurai" that he ended up directing 14 years after this movie in 2003. The movie stars Matthew Broderick as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw the man who was responsible for leading the first all black regiment in American military history, and Broderick happens to give the best performance of his career in this movie and this is the best movie he starred in since John Hughes's "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (1986) but only this movie is better than that one. This movie also ranks with some of the best war movies ever made such as "Platoon" (1986), "Patton" (1970), "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), "The Deer Hunter" (1978),"The Hurt Locker" (2009), and "American Sniper" (2014). This movie also has an exceptional cast of characters that are part of this regiment such as Shaw's right hand man Major Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), Private Trip (Denzel Washington), Sergeant Major John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman), Corporal Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), and many more. During the course of this movie we see that Colonel Shaw and Major Forbes often have frustrations with their regiment not only because when they start training for the war (in this case the Civil War) and they don't know how to do anything that a soldier does even after they are taught how to do it, the screenplay for this movie was written by Kevin Jarre who totally nailed it on the head with his script from the book by Lincoln Kirstein and Peter Burchard, as well as Colonel Shaw's letters. The movie ended up winning 3 Oscars 27 years ago including best supporting actor for Denzel Washington, best cinematography and best sound which the movie totally deserved. Director Edward Zwick does a fantastic job of showing how and why war is hell, and that the bond between soldiers in times of war is unbreakable which is what the Dire Straits song "Brothers in Arms" from 4 years earlier is all about and it has been proved throughout not just our history but throughout the history of the world. the movie is also the first movie that Denzel Washington did for Edward Zwick and the movies that they would do in the future would be "Courage Under Fire " (1996), and "The Siege" (1998). This is one of 1989's greatest films.