Gods and Generals | Review

3 ½ hour marathon simply lacks conviction.

One of the most bloodiest periods in American history is about to hit the screen at a time where the red, white and blue are minutes away from launching a full-out assault in the Middle East. After 1993’s Gettysburg, director Ron Maxwell’s re-breathes life into the legendary accounts of a country who can’t agree on the one way to live life and he can thank a fellow Yankee in the form of media-mogul Ted Turner for forking out some of the dough for this audacious production. Hey, if you can get some bucks for giving an executive producer some screen time then all the power to you.

The United States is pissed at the state of Virginia and this is a film that takes us through the series of the historical conflict between 1861 and 1863. With plenty of hallmark card moments, we watch how one disagreement leads us into the heart of one battle after the next. Maxwell’s Gods and Generals gives us the courageous accounts of many brave men who fought for their beliefs (this includes the popular freedom) such as Colonel Joshua Chamberlain (Jeff Daniels-Bloodwork) a professor Confederate, Generals Robert E. Lee (Robert Duvall-The Apostle) and “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephan Lang-Gettysburg). We also get a glimpse of the proud women that supported their blood-hungry men.

One of the most recent trends is the scary 3-hour film, which works just fine if you make entertaining films like Jackson did with his first two installments in the Lord of the Rings series or the grand Scorsese and his Gangs of New York, but in the case of this film we come to think that either there wasn’t enough money leftover to hire a film editor or perhaps Maxwell wanted to create the most authentic sense of realism where a 2-year take on history comes off like a 2-year runtime. A sense of realism strives from the fact that they filmed in areas that replicates the Virginia battle terrains and by a cast of thousands at their disposal which shows off the massive efforts from the blue and grey. Unfortunately, these non-actors whom are great with the battle cries look completely out of place on the battle field with expressions that fail to convince that there is a bloody war going on at every turn and moment. When a cannon blast rips off the arm of a solider, the one standing next to him takes more than a spilt second to react and barely budges a square foot into another direction and I had enough trouble believing that out of a thousand soldiers not one would duck when bullets are flying off in every direction. I had trouble understanding how a war had more than half a million casualties when the enemy is taken out with the butt-end of your rifle instead of splitting his guts out with the nice pointy sharp edge in the front of the weapon? Among the other annoyances are the Santa Clause beards a plenty, the pluralized speech patterns of non-slave blacks, overview shots of the towns that look like scenery paintings sold at garage sales and a series of unbelievably strained farewell speech dialogues between characters that are overly dramatic and the unimaginative cinematography.

The only audience that might actually enjoy this type of picture is the thousands of buffoons who take pleasure in re-enacting the battles from the civil war on long summer BBQ weekends in the United States, as for the rest of us Gods and Generals is as uninspiring as the film’s movie poster and Bob Dylan’s whaling away at the film’s conclusion. You would like that this would be better suited as a television mini-series but I’d even pass on this idea and probably watch CNN’s play by play on the current war instead.

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