-
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.
March 7, 2003
