-
Robert
Duvall is more convincing playing Robert E. Lee than Martin
Sheen was in the same role for the movie, "Gettysburg,"
not least because Duvall is a better horseman. As a reviewer
for the Dallas Morning News noticed, Martin Sheen bounced
all over his horse while playing Lee ten years ago. Duvall,
like his famous ancestor, actually knows how to ride a horse.
-
Respectable
box office numbers will give writer/director Ron Maxwell the
leverage he needs to secure funding to complete the film trilogy
of which this is one part.
-
Many professional
critics would rather you watched something else.
-
As Daniel
McCarthy wrote recently for this site, "Gods and Generals
is more or less explicitly Christian, Southern, and even libertarian."
-
If you
like accents, this is a feast: both regional dialects and the
Bible-soaked patterns of nineteenth-century American speech
are faithfully reproduced.
-
Stephen
Lang as Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
-
If you
haven’t been to a movie with an intermission since "Lawrence
of Arabia," you’re overdue.
-
Mira Sorvino
as Fanny Chamberlain.
-
Kevin Conway
as Union Sergeant "Buster" Kilrain.
-
Frankie
Faison as the loyal but conflicted cook, Jim Lewis.
-
The poignancy
of the battlefield clash between northern and southern Irishmen.
-
The mid-river
meeting of Johnny Reb and Billy Yank on Christmas Day.
-
The performance
of the song, "Bonnie Blue Flag."
-
The regimental
(read: state) flags under the opening credits, which offer silent
but eloquent testimony to Confederate notions of patriotism.
-
Few movies
take philosophy or religion as seriously as this one does.
-
"Gods
and Generals" director Ron
Maxwell had nice things to say about Ang Lee’s "Ride
with the Devil," another under-rated movie about the
War Between the States.
-
Ken Burns’
famous "Civil
War" mini-series needs company.
-
Intelligence,
passion, and fair-mindedness on the big screen is a good thing.
