So, here’s a case where, once again, a movie people who know me would assume I had seen but, for one reason or another, I hadn’t yet. Yes, until recently, I had managed not to see the Civil War-era movie Glory. Coming as it did at a time when Hollywood was maybe starting to make some at least half-assed attempts to tell more racially inclusive stories while still making a good movie.
Glory actually is a good movie, but there sure were a lot of lesser movies trying to do what Glory did coming out for a while there.
Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderik) is the son of wealthy abolitionists from Boston. He signed up to fight for the Union almost as soon as the Civil War broke out and rose in the ranks, possibly due to his general wealth and education. He isn’t the bravest of soldiers, but when his parents’ highly placed political friends propose a new regiment made up entirely of black enlisted men with white officers overseeing them, something the Union government hasn’t been willing to do up until that point. Getting his good friend Major Forbes (Cary Elwes) to help out, Shaw, promoted to Colonel, soon has a regiment full of willing volunteers.
What follows is Shaw learning to be a good officer while his various recruits learn to be good soldiers. That comes from abusive drill sergeants and general unease between the various men, most notably between the free, educated man Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher) and the hotheaded former slave Trip (Denzel Washington). And, after a lot of politicking, Shaw and his men finally see combat as they lead a futile assault on a Confederate fort.
Director Edward Zwick crafted a good war movie. True, much of what happens is cliche. The military cliches are there as Shaw learns to be a better officer to his men while his clumsy recruits learn how to march and fight. Likewise, the cliches of white men learning to be better to black men and perhaps vice versa are there as well as Shaw refuses his own pay after his soldiers refuse theirs after their pay is cut to less than what white soldiers earn or when he has to physically manhandle a quartermaster to get his men shoes. And that comes after Shaw does some things that may suggest he’s no better than some of the men he’s opposing in the Confederacy.
However, as much as these may be cinematic cliches, they still work. I’ve seen Morgan Freeman play the wise older man and Washington play the charismatic hothead many times over, and both men do it so well. Likewise, Shaw’s moves to get the boots sure did remind me of Kevin Costner taking an ax to a bathroom sign in Hidden Figures. True, Hidden Figures came years later, and the cliche had to come from somewhere, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve seen many of these scenes before in different ways. But again, Zwick makes them work.
If I had a complaint, it’s that like many movies of its era about racial relations in many ways becomes more about the white man becoming better and through his actions making black people’s lives better in some way. As good as the final battle is, and it’s heartbreaking conclusion for characters the audience spent two hours getting to know, it still shows Shaw’s death as the catalyst for even hotheaded Pvt. Trip to finally act like the soldiers they’d been training to be.
That said, there was one scene that elevated the movie a bit above the rest, and that was when Shaw asked Trip to be the company’s standard-bearer. Though a great honor, Trip refuses it (at least, he does at that moment) because Trip, unlike Shaw, sees the black man’s struggles won’t be ending when the shooting war ends. Sure, the Civil War may end, but the Civil Rights War won’t any time soon. Scenes like that go a long way towards acknowledging a problem that even a massive war with huge casualties can’t solve.
Grade: B+
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