Common Sense Note
Most Hollywood movies about the Civil War, including "Gone with the Wind," were romanticized depictions of the South, complete with happy or comical slaves. GLORY is one of the few told entirely from the Northern point of view, and the first one to showcase the role of fighting men of color.
Parents need to know that there is graphic war violence here; all the bloody killings may be too much for many tweens and some teens. Know your kid. Also, the movie deals with racism and other mature themes. Note: most of the soldiers here die in service. You could use the movie as a springboard into a discussion about the history of racism in this country.
Although this is considered one of the best dramatizations of the Civil War, it leaves out complex reasons why the US split into Union and Confederacy and clashed in battle. History-minded parents might go look up Ken Burns' documentary series "The Civil War" and other supplemental material, or even get acquainted with area Civil War-re-enactment groups (don't be surprised if you meet re-enactors who actually performed as extras in GLORY and other films).
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
GLORY tells the epic story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first unit of black troops that fought in the American Civil War. Progressive-minded Col. Robert Gould Shaw is their leader, and he's played by Matthew Broderick, looking no older than he did as Ferris Bueller -- which is quite correct, as men not much more than boys were principle combatants in the war.
Shaw's college friend Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), a free-born African-American, eagerly joins the regiment, but most of the soldiers come from backgrounds considerably less refined. They are proud but illiterate, shoeless ex-slaves, some consumed with hatred and vengeance toward the Southern plantation-owners (the Confederacy vows that any black man caught on the battleground will be re-enslaved; any one in a uniform of the North would be executed). Troublemaker Trip (Denzel Washington) has almost as little respect for the Union. He and the other blacks are kept in line, barely, by John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman), a former gravedigger who, like Shaw, appreciates the vital importance of the 54th and the need for obedience if they are all to be soldiers worthy of the name.
The concept of army discipline leads to two starkly-dramatic moments. Shaw imports a trash-talking sergeant (John Finn) to whip the recruits into shape, Marine drill-instructor style, and the one who most buckles under the bullying is Shaw's friend, the bespectacled Searles. When Trip breaks the rules to find himself a proper pair of shoes, he is subjected to standard punishment -- a whipping (obviously not a new experience for him), while the rest of the 54th look on in horror at a treatment they thought they'd never face again.
Rigorous, even pitiless codes of military behavior is something worth talking about with kids, especially in military families (the topic actually took up most of Robert Heinlein's novel "Starship Troopers," something that never made it to the big-screen version of the sci-fi tale). In GLORY Trip straightens out and Rawlins (like Shaw, an actual historical figure) becomes America's first black officer. The noble ideals behind the 54th stand out when Shaw and the 54th meet another so-called black Union regiment in the field; it turns out to be a drunken mob encouraged by their corrupt commander to pillage and rape in already-defeated Southern territories.
Feeling that they are being treated by Washington as inferior troops, ill-equipped and destined for only boring, non-combat missions (in the 20th century the black Tuskegee Airmen pilots of WWII had the same complaint), Shaw demands the 54th be allowed to prove themselves in battle.
Finally, in an assault on a well-defended Confederate fortress in South Carolina, the black regiment gets their moment of "glory," but at a horrific cost, and the filmmakers do not shy away from the historical fact that Shaw and most of the 54th died under fire. Their ultimate sacrifice earned the honor that opened the doors for free black men to serve.
This powerful and complex movie is best for mature teens and up; it may be too intense for younger kids.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentInference of rape as a weapon of war. |
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ViolencePlentiful death by rifle fire, bayonet and mortar; a whipping. |
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LanguageSoldierly expletives. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSocial drinking. |
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