For Freedom

Rating: 10/10 (21 February 2009)

Glory is the story of the men and commander of the 54th Massachusetts, the first black regiment organized after the Emancipation Proclamation culminating in its first full scale military engagement at Fort Wagner in South Carolina. In command of the regiment was Robert Gould Shaw, a colonel at the ripe old age of 26 of the Boston Goulds and Shaws.
Played by Matthew Broderick in what could be his career role on screen, Shaw's character serves as narrator of the events. He was quite the letter writer and his correspondence to his parents and friends in the Boston area have been considered a valuable piece of original historical material and are preserved at the Harvard Library.
Shaw was a fervent believer in not only the abolitionist cause, but a firm believer in racial equality, many were not even in the army that was fighting for slave freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation. He fought hard for his troops, for their rations and supplies, against quartermasters who thought it was a fun thing to short change them.
His good friend from the same Boston crowd Shaw came from was his second in command, Cabot Forbes played by Cary Elwes. They've got their differences as well, but both are committed to a cause.
Shaw's black regiment comes in all shapes and sizes as well. Denzel Washington won his first Academy Award as a rather undisciplined soldier who eventually proves his worth on the battle field. Morgan Freeman is an older man who rapidly rises to leadership ranks because of his concern for the unit as a whole. My favorite performance in the film however is that of Andre Braugher. He plays a free black man from Massachusetts who grew up with Shaw and can read and write, a rare thing for black Americans free or slave in Civil War era America. In the south it was a crime to educate slaves beyond what they needed to know to perform their labors. He comes from a different perspective than the runaway slaves have and he's not at first accepted as a comrade among them, especially by Washington. Braugher shows he has the right stuff though and he should have been recognized with an Oscar nomination in my humble opinion.
In addition to Denzel Washington's Oscar, Glory took home gold for Sound and for Cinematography in 1989 and was nominated for Editing and for Art&Set Direction. The film has the look and feel of the Civil War era about it.
It took a long time for the heroic story of the 54th Massachusetts and its leader to come to the screen. Both are shown to have had the right stuff. The tens of thousands who died in the Civil War and those for whom the war was all about and died at Fort Wagner gave what Lincoln called, 'the last full measure of devotion'. And this film is a tribute to them.