Glory Hallelujah!....and High Praise to the DVD As Well..
This review refers to the Columbia Tristar 1/98 release of the DVD edition of "Glory"....
There are many glowing reviews of "Glory" to be found here. I feel the same way about this wonderful film, and after touching on the story I would like to talk about this DVD release(see above) which is an outstanding quality and excellent value.
"Glory" is an exceptional film. A true story of the Civil War that is both touching and inspirational. It depicts the story of the first black unit from the North to be trained and actually go into battle. Led by their very empathetic but very young Colonel(played brillantly by Matthew Broderick), the 54th Regiment endures many hardships felt not only by being soldiers of this devastating war but as African Americans as well.Their spirit, pride and tears along the way, is projected in this film by these wonderful actors in a way that will make you feel all the anguish and pride that they felt.
The cast includes Morgan...
A fitting tribute to Colonel R. G. Shaw and his brave men
I first saw this film right after its release on video nearly 16 years ago, and I can say in all honesty that it changed my life. Having grown up with an interest in Civil War history, this film made me realise just how little I actually knew of the period beyond what most people learn in school about this era of American History. So as the credits rolled, I wrote down the names of the books quoted, sought them out at the library, and it wasn't long before I began to realise that this would beg some further research. Taking the bibliography of one of the sources for this film, "One Gallant Rush" by Peter Burchard, I did my utmost to find and read as many of his sources as I could possibly get my hands on.
The result of this research has been that now I wish that the film had been truer to the actual story of what really happened. There are some obviously glaring historical inaccuracies in the film, but if you don't know the actual story as intimately as I do, it does...
GLORY ... Hallelujah!
Here's one of those rare movies that succeeds as both a sweeping, visually sumptuous historical epic AND an intimate, character-driven personal drama. This fact-based account of the first black regiment to fight for the Union in the Civil War is filled with scenes of grand pageantry: the bloody battle at Antietam Creek; the first assembly of the 54th Regiment; the proud parade of the finally-trained and uniformed soldiers; the climactic attack on Fort Wagner. And yet despite these heart-pounding, majestic sequences, the film at no time loses its focus on the individual characters whose stories provide an emotional connection to the action. The performances of the once-in-a-lifetime cast are uniformly superb: Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, and Andre Braugher are all at the top of their game, and Denzel Washington (who deservedly won the Supporting Actor Oscar) is amazing, especially in the scene in which he undergoes a bitterly harsh punishment. The dozens of emotions that...
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