Glory

Each element combines to make Glory one of the few Civil War movies that reach into the very guts of that conflict. [12 Jan 1990, p.E1]

Glory is, without question, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War. Read full review

An eloquent, heart-tugging Civil War epic about the first black infantry regiment to march off to battle for the Union. And epic is the word. Not since John Ford has a film maker created such dramatic large-scale Civil War battle scenes in a major theatrical film. Read full review

Voice-over narration makes effective use of the real-life Shaw's correspondence, but in terms of authenticity the battle sequences are truly impressive. Marching across open fields amid cannon-shot, or plunging into hand-to-hand combat, the stark clarity of Freddie Francis' cinematography combined with Zwick's intimate style evokes immediacy and fear. Read full review

Glory is a big movie for a big moment in America's hidden history. [12 Jan 1990, p.D1]

This stirring historical re-creation depicts the experiences of America's first unit of black soldiers in the Civil War and the young Northerner who leads them. Read full review

Glory is a strong and valuable film no matter whose eyes it is seen through. Read full review

Glory is the long-needed antidote to Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. With a grave clarity that echoes Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Boston Common monument and Robert Lowell's angry poem, For the Union Dead, Glory not only does justice to its deserving subject, but brings it into the popular consciousness with a distinction that compels respect. [12 Jan 1990, p.36p]

Glory ultimately offers a stirring answer to the historical distortions of Mississippi Burning, by presenting African Americans as people who aggressively participated in their own struggle for freedom. [12 Jan 1990, p.22]

This is a sad and gallant chapter, and a first-rate movie. [12 Jan 1990, p.3F]

Richly plotted, alternately inspiring and horrifying, Glory is an enlightening and entertaining tribute to heroes too long forgotten. Read full review

Exceptionally well-rendered and emotive war drama. Read full review

Glory is celebratory, but it celebrates in a manner that insists on acknowledging the sorrow. This is a good, moving, complicated film. Read full review

It is the movie's often awesome imagery and a bravely soaring choral score by James Horner that transfigure the reality, granting it the status of necessary myth. Read full review

Although the script is a conventional melodrama, the director, Edward Zwick, has made something more thoughtful than that.

A historical drama about a black regiment that proves its mettle during the Civil War, may not hold up to intense scrutiny but it marches to the glorious beat that fired up the Massachusetts 54th. And it's hard not to get carried along.

A pretty watchable and always interesting period film, well photographed by English cinematographer Freddie Francis. Read full review

Glory has a genuine moral basis, and it makes all the difference in the world. [12 Jan 1990, p.A]

Glory leaves you with not just the sense of its characters' triumph over injustice, but their destruction by the very system that empowered them to begin with. There's no escaping that story, either -- even if Glory doesn't really tell it. [12 Jan 1990, p.G5]

The movie may have been so structured to offer whites in the audience a central white figure with whom to identify. But it's the ultimate irony that moviemakers who want to call attention to the historical accomplishments of blacks feel that they can only do so if the hero of their film is white. [12 Jan 1990, p.6]

Glory ends with a flourish, although much is left unsaid. [12 Jan 1990, p.21]

Though the film has an evocative look reminiscent of Matthew Brady’s period photographs, Zwick has stuffed the actors’ mouths with numbing bombast. Glory is a shame. Read full review