Movie of the Week: Gettysburg

   

 

    Movie of the Week (6/30/13-7/6/13): In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg this week, July 1-3, a critical battle in the Civil War and a defining moment in the history of our nation, Gettysburg is the movie of the week. The title pretty much tells the plot of the movie, it is a visual telling of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, but this is based on a novel called The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, which is a great book!
    The film opens with a spy looking in on the Union troops and he reports back to his commander. So, once it starts it really is hard to not finish the film even though we know how it ends, we still want to continue to watch it and experience the battle for ourselves. The film opens up showing us how the armies ended up in that small town of Gettysburg instead of just jumping to right before the battle. We get a good set up as to how and why the North and South armies end up there and we are introduced to all of our main characters in the first 45 minutes of the film. It was done well for how large of a film this was on a budget that it had.

    The cast for this movie was truly wonderful, and it was all male, the only female speaking part was one line in a town in which troops were passing through. We have Tom Berenger as James Longstreet, Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee, Stephen Lang as George Pickett, Richard Jordan as Lewis Armistead, Sam Elliott as John Buford, C. Thomas Howell as Thomas Chamberlain, Kevin Conway as 'Buster' Kilrain, and Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain. This is a great cast and I could go on all day about how great they all did, but I'll just say that they were wonderful and their real life counterparts, with the exception of Kilrain, would have been proud.
    What makes this a great war film is that it is one of the most accurate war movies put on film. From the first day of skirmishes of the last day of the battle, it shows in great detail through exciting battle sequences and dialogue scenes. It is not just a movie with bloody fight scenes, we get fantastic drama as well, from just soldiers sitting around camp fires talking about home, politics, or the battle itself to men telling each other their goodbyes in case they didn't make it the next day in battle. Again, what makes this movie great is the tremendous detail in the camp and the pre-battle speeches, which may give you chills when watching it for the first time.
    We are shown in great detail each day of the battle, although some things are missing because it is a film and the battle was so large they couldn't just fit everything in it. The second and third day of the battle in the movie are the most emotional, especially the last battle, which is very powerful, emotional, and just plain sad to watch at the end. With the film being so large and on a small budget we can see some things that doesn't make it quite as realistic. There are really not very many cannonball explosions on the ground as their should be, not very much blood or bodies on the ground, and some of the beards look fake, but some of the beards back then were so big that the actors just didn't have time to grow their own. But, don't let that stop you from watching this film.

    The one thing that seems to turn people away from this movie is its run time, which clocks in at about four hours and forty minutes. But, that is not a problem, you can easily watch it in two nights or if you want you can watch it in three nights, what ever makes you happy, just sit down and watch it, you will not be disappointed. This is truly one of the greatest war films ever made, my personal favorite, because it is one of the most accurate. We get wonderful performances, great direction from Ron Maxwell who had to take on the large production, good drama, some exciting battle sequences, and we also have a truly heartbreaking musical score that is both uplifting and extremely sad. If you haven't seen this film, see it, this week particularly, you can watch it in two nights if it will help you get through it. It might be long but it will be worth it, I promise!                                                                                       4/4 Stars      

Check out the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=arGg3Twqmi8