Glory

This American Civil War drama deals with the true story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first regiment of black soldiers ever to fight for the U.S. Army, who distinguished themselves in a valiant but failed attempt to take Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July 1863.

Matthew Broderick plays the real-life Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, an idealistic young Bostonian who is charged with heading up the regiment. Although racial prejudice affected the Northern army as well as that of the South and there was general reluctance to arm negroes, Shaw intuitively knew that only by allowing his men to fight (and thereby die) for the abolitionist cause would Emancipation ever really mean anything. The film is his story and that of the black soldiers who fought and, in many cases died, along with him at Fort Wagner. 

Director Edward Zwick, aided by Kevin Jarre's script and James Horner’s score, doesn’t spare the sentiment in going for a somewhat too fulsome sense of a noble mission as he leads us to the final all-stops-out battle scene. The truth was probably not so anywhere near so glorious as the film, somewhat anomalously (it was released the same year as Oliver Stone’s Born On The 4th Of July) depicts it to be but this celebratory tone is not achieved at the price of honesty. From the get-go the horror of war, particularly of the old-fashioned style of the 19th century, is graphically brought home and throughout, Shaw is a man acutely aware of its bitter realities.  That he and his fellow soldiers willingly gave their lives to the cause they believed in deserves our admiration/ 

Broderick is an unlikely choice to play Shaw but he does a solid job, not entirely convincing as an 1860s commissioned officer, but a long way from Ferris Bueller.  Denzel Washington picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, for a performance that extends his usual wise-guy act into more empathetic territory whilst with this film and Driving Miss Daisy, also released the same year, Morgan Freeman kick-started a lengthy career playing the same type of level-headed character over and over and over again.

If the characters seem rather too modern, a great deal of effort has gone in creating an authentic look to the film and whilst this is well-realized (veteran cinematographer Freddie Francis does a fine job) Zwick does not lose himself in period detail but rather makes it integral to the drama..

Zwick had previously directed the post-adolescent Zeitgeist film About Last Night... and although the canvas is much bigger here, once again his strength is in his attention to his actors.  The outcome might be a little too neatly packaged but the effect is rewardiing.

 

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