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For the Glory

Dove review.

What an inspiring DVD! This film portrays a true-life story in a gritty, realistic way with a wonderful performance by Jason Burkey who plays Kurt Keykendall, a college-age would-be basketball player who learns he is much more gifted as a soccer goalie. The movie includes some mature topics such as the loss of Kurt’s mentally handicapped brother, a mother who drinks a lot and sometimes becomes ugly, and Kurt’s father who can’t imagine Kurt doing anything else but playing basketball.

This remarkable film will inspire many viewers as they watch Kurt overcome obstacle after obstacle, including a broken ankle, to eventually make the U.S. Olympics team. Fortified with his faith in God, Kurt learns that a life that is lived for the glory of God is a life that will make a difference. This film’s wonderful themes include faith and a strong work ethic. Five Doves from us, our best rating!

Dove Rating Details

A kid kicks another kid in the groin; a drunken mother gives her son a shove in anger; a soccer player shoves and spits at another player; a player breaks his ankle in a soccer game; a player is apparently accidentally kicked in the head while playing soccer.

Kissing by a couple.

Crap-1; H (as a place)-1

Drinking in several scenes by college students including a few party scenes; a young man's mother battles the bottle and drinks a lot following the death of her other son; a young man becomes drunk but his friends drive him home; a "have a drink" comment.

Shirtless men; young man seen in boxers.

A kid makes fun of another kid's brother, calling both he and his brother a "retard"; in a positive scene prayer and church services and part of a pastor's sermon are seen and heard; a man says his wife is an embarrassment and a drunk; arguements between wife and husband and son and mother; mature themes; belching.

More Information

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Glory’ On Netflix, Where A Woman Crafts An Elaborate Revenge Plan For Her High School Tormentors

Where to stream:.

• Korean Dramas

Stream It Or Skip It: 'The Frog' On Netflix, About A Mysterious Visitor To A Summer Rental House Who Turns The Owner's Life Inside Out

Stream it or skip it: ‘love next door’ on netflix, a light, romantic “will they or won’t they” korean drama , stream it or skip it: ‘romance in the house’ on netflix, a rags-to-riches k-drama, stream it or skip it: 'red swan' on hulu, about revenge, marriages of convenience, and a woman falling for her bodyguard.

Revenge has always been good fodder for TV and film plots because of the whole “best served cold” axiom; the story can span decades, and the person getting revenge can spring their plan when and where the targets least expect it. In a new Korean drama, a woman executes her complicated plan to get back at her high school tormentors, eighteen years after the fact.

THE GLORY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see a woman driving a car from the back seat, where it looks like there are boxes and crates.

The Gist: The woman, Moon Dong-eun (Song Hye-kyo), is moving into a new apartment in Seoul, having been away for a number of years. We see her stapling pictures of Park Yeon-jin (Lim Ji-yeon), a well-known weather forecaster, to her wall. There are multiple, large burn scars on her arms and shoulders. She imagines Yeom-jin walking in and criticizing her collage, and Dong-eun bashing her in the face with the stapler.

We flash back 18 years, to the summer of 2004. Dong-eun (Jung Ji-so) and Yeon-jin (Shin Ye-eun) are seniors in high school, and Yeon-jin is the ringleader of a group of popular students who have been bullying Dong-eun. The other members of the group are Jeon Jae-joon (Song Byeong-geun), Choi Hye-jeong (Song Ji-woo), Lee Sa-ra (Bae Kang-hee) and Son Myeong-o (Seo Woo-hyuk).

The group doesn’t just make fun of Dong-eun, they’re cruel and violent. After an incident where Dong-eun got the police involved, she’s forced into the gym and Yeon-jin has her “test” her curling iron. What that means is that she presses the iron on Dong-eun’s arms, causing scarring, bleeding burns, while the rest of the group laughs. At this point, Dong-eun feels that she can’t rely on anyone to help, given the influence Yeon-jin’s mother has on the school and community. So when the nurse asks Dong-eun who hurt her, Yeon-jin, hiding from class in the nurse’s office, gladly says it’s her.

Back in 2022, Dong-eun encounters Yeon-jin’s daughter in the school yard, and talks to her a little bit about how she thinks about the kid’s mom every day. “Some hatred looks like longing,” she tells the kid. Why is Dong-eun there? That’s part of her elaborate plan to get revenge on each and every one of her tormentors.

In 2004, after the group comes to her flat in a dilapidated building and tortures her all over again, Dong-eun decides to drop out of school, citing the entire group’s violence as the reason. That leads to her chagrined homeroom teacher beating on her in the school office, which leads Yeon-jin’s mother to offer Dong-eun’s mom a monetary settlement if she signs off on a form saying her daughter was “maladjusted.” Soon after getting the money, her mom moves and leaves Dong-eun on her own.

Dong-eun then heads back to the gym to tell Yeon-jin that “my dream is you,” meaning revenge will be on her mind at all times. Years go by, and Dong-eun gets her GED and goes to college. But her scars won’t let her forget what Yeon-jin and company did to her.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Glory feels like a darker, more brooding take on  Kill Bill .

Our Take: One of the things that struck us when we watched the first episode of  The Glory is that what happened to Moon Dong-eun was more than just bullying, it was out-and-out assault. It’s pretty extreme to see that, eighteen years after the fact, the scars inflicted by Yeon-jin and company — mental and physical — were deep and permanent, and that they completely got away with it.

Writer Kim Eun-sook wants viewers to be shocked by just what Moon Dong-eun went through in order to buy into her complex revenge plan. We need to buy into the fact that Dong-eun has made it her life’s purpose to get this revenge, even if it seems unrealistic that her tormentors would be able to get away with literally disfiguring someone right under the school administration’s eyes.

There are class issues at play here; Yeon-jin’s mother is pretty cruel to her while being able to buy or otherwise influence away all of her daughter’s bad deeds, while Dong-eun lives in a slum with parents who find her to be more of a problem than anything else. That’s really the only background we get about the rivals, at least in the first episode, but that’s enough. Dong-eun pulled herself up from pretty desperate circumstances, fueled by the thought of revenge, but that grim upbringing is part of what drives her, too.

Despite the lack of details,  The Glory works as a revenge story because you’re immediately drawn to Dong-eun and want to see her get back at those that scarred her for life. But we hope that there will also be more nuance to Yeon-jin and some of the other tormentors, as well. Will they have changed enough for Dong-eun to have second thoughts? Or will they just be adult versions of the bullies they were in high school? Should be interesting to see that play out.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Dong-eun stares at the photos she stapled on the wall of her new flat, and we hear her in voice over say that “an eye for an eye” sounds “too fair to me.”

Sleeper Star: Shin Ye-eun as young Yeon-jin does a good job of showing how the bully is someone who tends to get bullied in their own lives.

Most Pilot-y Line: Dong-eun’s homeroom teacher, who is her guardian, gets her from the police station and says, “You came here with your fucking uniform on? And you called the police over a little prank between friends?” Way to be understanding, dude.

Our Call: STREAM IT.  The Glory is dark as hell, but it sets up the situation well in the first episode, giving viewers a view of just why Dong-eun has had revenge on her mind for so many years.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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• Entertainment
• How Netflix’s <i>The Glory</i> Drew Inspiration From Real Stories of School Violence in Korea

How Netflix’s The Glory Drew Inspiration From Real Stories of School Violence in Korea

The Glory , a popular K-drama about a woman who seeks revenge on the classmates who severely bullied her as a teen, returns to Netflix today with its final eight episodes. In the series—which remained on the streamer’s Global Top Ten list for five weeks after dropping its first batch of episodes in December—Song Hye-kyo plays Moon Dong-eun, who has devoted her entire adult life to crafting a meticulous plan to take down her former abusers. The Glory chiefly follows Dong-eun’s enactment of that plan, 20 years after the abuse. It is the latest in a long line of Korean dramas that use school bullying as a plot point, and its narrative impetus comes from real-life incidents of school violence in Korea.

If you’re a frequent watcher of Korean dramas or reader of webtoons , then you’ve almost certainly seen a storyline about school bullying before. The zombie virus that takes over Hyosan High in All of Us Are Dead , Netflix’s 11th most-streamed TV series of all time , is created in a father’s attempt to protect his son from school bullies. In last year’s school drama Weak Hero Class 1 , the action begins when protagonist Yeon Shi-eun (Park Ji-hoon), a quiet model student, violently strikes back against his bully. Another 2022 drama, The King of Pigs , follows two survivors of childhood bullying—one who grows up to become a serial killer, and the other who becomes a police detective.

Kim Eun-sook—who has penned some of hallyu’s most popular dramas, including Goblin , Descendants of the Sun , and Mr. Sunshine — was inspired to write The Glory when her teen daughter asked her a jarring question: “Mom, would you be more heartbroken if I beat someone nearly to death or if I got beat nearly to death by someone else?” With The Glory , Kim set out to answer that question. Part 1 begins the story, chronicling Dong-eun’s psychological and physical torment in gruesome detail. In Part 2, we will finally learn if Dong-eun gets the justice society so frustratingly refuses to provide.

The real-life issues behind the narrative device

In creating The Glory , Kim researched the systemic school violence that has impacted Korean society for decades. Bullying is a widespread problem in Korea, where suicide has been the number one cause of death for young people since 2007. In the past few decades, it has also become a much-discussed one, as the government works to combat the problem. In 2004, Korea passed a law called The Special Act on School Violence Prevention, following the deaths of several teenagers by suicide after they were bullied. The legislation led to the formation of school committees to monitor bullying, but according to this recent Korea Times article , bullying is still a major problem.

In The Glory , fictional character Dong-eun is severely bullied by a group of classmates. They sear her skin with a hair-curling iron, scratch her with pins, and beat and kick her. Many of these disturbing details are based on a real-life incident that occurred in 2006, at a girls’ school in Cheongju, Korea. In that case, three ninth-grade girls bullied their classmate for a period of 20 days, including burning her skin with a curling wand. The abuse resulted in a six-week hospitalization for injuries, among them a protruded tailbone.

Of course, that is just the physical toll. The targets of bullies also suffer psychological trauma that can follow them into adulthood. Though The Glory uses Dong-eun’s burn scars as a visual representation of the abuse she has survived, the series is much more interested in exploring how being bullied as a teen—and the absolute failure of the adults in her life to protect her—have shaped her mental health and life choices. In Episode 6 of the series, the usually stoic Dong-eun has a panic attack on the floor of a mechanic shop. It is triggered by the sound of meat being cooked on a grill, which brings back memories of her abuse.

Bullying is repeated, harmful behavior characterized by a power imbalance between the perpetrator and the victim. In K-dramas, this power balance is usually depicted as occurring along lines of social class. Research suggests bullying occurs across and within all socioeconomic groups, though victims are slightly more likely to come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. There is a more conclusive link between bullying and a country’s wealth inequality . In 2014, The Conversation did an investigation into the connections between social class and bullying, finding that bullying is more common in hierarchical social structures where more financial or social inequality is present. As they put it, “The more unequal a social setting, the more likely it is that using any means of getting ahead is endorsed.”

In Korea, wealth inequality is only slightly better than conditions in the U.S. , which is to say relatively high and growing . While school violence storylines are usually confined to a single town or institution, they act as narrative microcosms for larger social inequalities that teens and adults alike can relate to—both in Korea and in the U.S. In The Glory , protagonist Moon Dong-eun is poor, with parents who are not able to take care of her. Her chief abuser, Park Yeon-jin, comes from a wealthy family. When Dong-eun reports Yeon-jin’s physical abuse, first to her teacher and then to the police, they not only ignore her, but punish her for accusing someone from a wealthy family. In a particularly disturbing scene, Dong-eun’s homeroom teacher hits her repeatedly in the middle of the staff lounge for reporting the bullying.

Responses to bullying, on and off the screen

In the case of the real-life “hair curler bullying” incident, one of the bullies faced some consequences for her actions. According to the Korea Herald , she was arrested, and the school and teachers faced “administrative measures.” And, on a broader societal level, it is becoming increasingly common for Korean celebrities to face real consequences in their career when faced with allegations of past bullying. In 2021, professional volleyball players Lee Jae-yeong and Lee Da-yeong (both 24 at the time) were removed from their Korean clubs after they admitted to verbally abusing teammates in middle school. Last year, K-pop company HYBE dropped 16-year-old Kim Ga-ram from girl group Le Sserafim after allegations surfaced that the singer had verbally abused classmates.

In writing The Glory , Kim said she found an answer to the question her daughter asked, though it’s not a pretty one. “If my daughter is beaten to death, there might be a solution and that solution would be pulling all the perpetrators to hell because I have the money to do so,” said Kim, during a press conference for Part 2. “So my conclusion was that it would be better for me if you’re beaten.” In The Glory , however, the protagonist has neither the money nor the social standing to gain access to protection or justice. Dong-eun must seek her own justice years later, as corrupt societal institutions are unwilling to hold her rich, remorseless bullies accountable in any way.

“In The Glory , this can’t happen to Dong-eun, right?” said Kim. “And I think most of the victims can’t solve the problem like this because they don’t have wealthy parents. They don’t live in an environment like [the one] where my daughter is raised. So I wanted to cheer for them because reality is harsh. And I hope Dong-eun’s vengeance is successful. So that’s how I tried to lead my storyline towards. And [as for] how it ends, you should watch it yourselves.”

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

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Based on a True Story

Why ‘Glory’ Still Resonates More Than Three Decades Later

Newly added to Netflix, the Civil War movie reminds the nation that black Americans fought for their own emancipation

Kevin M. Levin

Thirty-one years ago, the Hollywood movie Glory debuted in theaters, garnering positive reviews from critics and historians as it told the Civil War story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first all-Black regiment raised in the North. Although it had middling success at the box office , the film became a stalwart of high school history classes and its popularity will only expand with its recent addition to the Netflix library.

The historical epic’s appearance on the streaming giant comes at the end of a summer that witnessed the sometimes-violent removal of roughly 75 Confederate monuments amidst nationwide protests under the “Black Lives Matter” banner. But even as the story of the black Americans who served in the United States army during the Civil War becomes more widely known, new viewers of the movie may wonder where fact and faction intersect in Glory .

The movie, directed by Ed Zwick, stars Matthew Broderick as the real-life figure Colonel Robert G. Shaw. The supporting cast includes Morgan Freeman as Sergeant John Rawlins, Andre Braugher as the well-educated Thomas Searles, and Denzel Washington as the escaped slave Trip. (All the black characters are fictional, though some have suggested that Searles is based on one of Frederick Douglass’ sons, who served in the regiment.)

The overall trajectory of Glory hews closely to the historical record; the script relies heavily on Shaw’s letters home during his time in the army (a title card opening the movie refers to the correspondence.) Over the course of just over two hours, viewers move from Battle of Antietam to the regiment’s military training to the deep South of Georgia and South Carolina. The movie's climax, involving the 54th’s failed attack at Battery Wagner on July 18, 1863, depicts a final victory over adversity and a collective sacrifice around the flag. Shaw is killed attempting to lead his men in a final assault as is Trip, who falls having finally embraced the regimental colors.

When Glory was first released in 1989, it challenged a deeply entrenched popular memory of the war that centered the conflict around brave white soldiers and left little room to grapple with the tough questions of slavery and emancipation. The film’s most important contribution is its success in challenging this narrow interpretation by reminding white Americans of the service of roughly 200,000 Black Americans in Union ranks and their role in helping to win the war and end slavery.

By 1863, the outcome of the war was far from certain. Following the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 of that year, President Abraham Lincoln authorized the raising of Black troops to help defeat the Confederacy. There was no more enthusiastic supporter of this policy than Massachusetts Governor John Andrew, who immediately commenced with the raising of the 54th Massachusetts, along with two other all-black units.

Shaw was a young 25-year-old at the time, and Broderick ably emotes the challenges the colonel faced overcoming his own racial prejudices while in command of the regiment, despite his family’s abolitionist credentials. Yet the movie falls short in capturing the extent of Shaw’s ambivalence toward being offered the command of the all-black regiment. In the movie, it’s played as a question that demanded but a few moments of reflection, when in reality Shaw initially rejected the governor’s commission citing concerns about whether commanding black soldiers would advance his own career and reputation in the army. His letters home throughout the first half of the war reveal more ambiguity about emancipation than the film acknowledges.

In a letter written to his mother following the battle of Antietam, Shaw questioned Lincoln’s issuance of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. “For my part,” Shaw wrote, “I can’t see what practical good it can do now. Wherever our army has been, there remain no slaves, and the Proclamation will not free them where we don’t go.”

One of the most accurate scenes in the movie is the burning of Darien, Georgia, on June 11, 1863. Shaw and his men accompanied Colonel James Montgomery’s force and did, as depicted, help to set fire to the town. Shaw was, in fact, concerned that the incident would reflect negatively on his men and prevent them from ever having the opportunity to fight in battle. The movie Shaw’s threat to expose General David Hunter’s illegal activity has no basis in truth, but more importantly, his relationship with Montgomery was much more complex than that written. Shaw respected Montgomery’s commitment to his abolitionist principles and belief that Southern society needed to be completely remade, despite his racist outlook on the men under his command. In a letter to his wife, Shaw described Montgomery as a “very conscientious man” and later to his mother admitted that “he is very attractive to me, and indeed I have taken a fancy to him.”

Notably, the movie also ignores the fact that Shaw spent significant time away from his men during the war, particularly during the time when they would have been training, as he was engaged to and later married Anna Kneeland Haggerty on May 2, 1863, just weeks before the regiment was scheduled to ship out to Beaufort, South Carolina .

Among its other dramatic licenses is the depiction of the regiment as made up primarily of the formerly enslaved, a creative choice that highlights a transition from slavery to freedom. While the story of emancipated men becoming soldiers and fighting for their freedom provides a powerful narrative that was indeed true of most black regiments, the 54th Massachusetts was made up primarily of free black men born in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. In contrast to scenes that show Shaw struggling to procure weapons, food, uniforms or other supplies, the soldiers lacked very little owing to Governor Andrew’s commitment to black enlistment.

In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie, Washington’s Trip is whipped by an Irish drill sergeant for leaving camp without permission in front of the entire regiment. The sight of a bare-backed former slave with old whipping marks still visible certainly works to stir the emotions of viewers, but had little basis in fact as the army had already banned the practice of flogging.

What these deviations from the historical record do accomplish, however, is reinforcing the truth that black soldiers experienced dangers on the battlefield and racial discrimination that white enlisted men never faced. Delivering this message is another of Glory ’s key additions to the public’s understanding of the United States Colored Troops. These men were subject to racial taunts and abuse by white soldiers and were forced to engage in manual labor by officers who didn’t believe they had the skill or bravery to engage in combat.

This discrimination extended to the government’s decision to pay black men $10 per month (as compared to white soldiers’ $13). This policy is briefly addressed by the movie when Colonel Shaw joins his men in tearing up their pay vouchers. The scene offers another opportunity for Shaw to work through his own prejudices and bond with his men, but leaves viewers with the question of whether the policy was ever discontinued. It was not.

The 54th Massachusetts and other Black regiments continued to protest their unequal pay following Shaw’s death in July 1863 and through much of 1864. Even Governor Andrew’s offer to pay the $3 difference out of state funds was met with a stern refusal by the regiment . Discipline deteriorated in the 54th Massachusetts and other regiments as men engaged in insubordinate behavior in response to their unequal pay. In April 1864, 75 men in the 55th Massachusetts flirted with open mutiny by appealing to President Lincoln for immediate assistance. Congress finally discontinued the policy in the summer of 1864, but not before a soldier in the 55th Massachusetts was executed for striking his commander twice in the face after refusing to follow an order.

While Glory presents the regiment’s failed assault on Battery Wagner as its greatest achievement, their extended protest against unequal pay helps to align the service of Black soldiers within the broader history of civil rights, and perhaps is an even stronger connection to modern-day protests against racial injustice.

The movie also leaves little to the imagination in exposing the horrors of Civil War combat, but only alludes to the full range of dangers experienced by black soldiers on the battlefield. Black soldiers that met the enemy on Civil War battlefields were massacred on more than one occasion (most notably at Fort Pillow and the Crater in 1864) after being captured by Confederates, who viewed them as slaves in rebellion rather than soldiers that were protected by the rules of war. Some were even sold into slavery rather than sent to prison camps. White officers like Shaw also risked being executed for inciting slave rebellion.

The final scene in which Confederates bury Shaw along with the rest of his now shoeless men in a mass grave brings the story to a fitting close by suggesting that he and his men managed to triumph over racism within the ranks in a war that ultimately led to Confederate defeat, the preservation of the Union and a "new birth of freedom." (The regiment’s story continues off screen, as it saw military action through the end of the war and remained stationed in South Carolina until December 1865, when it returned home to be decommissioned.)

Viewers are left to reflect on the image of Augustus Saint-Gaudens' beautiful monument to Shaw and his regiment, located across from the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Dedicated in 1897, the relief sculpture commemorates the march through Boston by Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts that is beautifully captured in the movie. Until the 1990s, it remained one of the only public reminders of the service of roughly 200,000 free and formerly enslaved Black men in the United States army during the Civil War.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Confederate monuments blanketed prominent public spaces in cities and towns throughout the South and even beyond. They celebrated the Christian virtue and bravery of the Confederate soldier, as well as generals such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and denied that the war had anything to do with the preservation of slavery and white supremacy.

Some Confederate monuments went even further and intentionally distorted the history of African Americans by celebrating their supposed loyalty to the Confederate cause. In 1914, for example, the United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated a large Confederate monument on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery that included the images of the loyal “Mammy” protecting the child of a Confederate officer going off to war and a body servant marching alongside white soldiers.

Altogether, these monuments ignored the steps that African Americans took to undermine the Confederacy by fighting against it and as a result denied that they had any interest in attaining their freedom. This denial helped to reinforce the Jim Crow culture of white supremacy that prevented black Americans from voting and the ability to take part in any public discussion about how to commemorate the past in public spaces.

Glory still offers a powerful reminder of the stakes of the Civil War for communities across the country debating whether to remove their Confederate monuments. The decisions made will go far in determining whether ‘Black Lives Matter’ today and in history.

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Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston. He is the author of numerous articles and books about the Civil War, including Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth .

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"is it perfect enough yes": denzel washington’s 34-year-old war movie gets a near perfect score from historian.

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• Glory , a 34-year-old war movie directed by Edward Zwick and starring Denzel Washington, is praised for its accurate depiction of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Historian Gary Adelman gives it a near-perfect score of 9 out of 10.
• Adelman highlights the accuracy of the movie's portrayal of battles, military tactics, and the challenges faced by infantry lines. He also mentions the rarity of night fighting during the Civil War and how the movie accurately incorporates this aspect.
• Glory 's depiction of the Battle of Fort Wagner, featuring black soldiers, resonated emotionally with audiences. Despite some discourse surrounding the size of Colonel Shaw's role, the film received praise for its storytelling, settings, and focus on Black American soldiers. It won multiple Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Denzel Washington.

Denzel Washington's 34-year-old war movie Glory gets a near perfect score from historian Gary Adelman. The movie, directed by Edward Zwick, explores the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first Black units of the American Civil War, and their efforts during the Battle of Fort Wagner and other conflicts. Washington starred as Private Silas Trip, a role that earned him his first Academy Award, and was joined by a cast that included Cary Elwes, Andre Braugher, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick as Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

In a recent video from Insider , Adelman looked at several moments from Glory and explained why the on-screen action was accurate. Beginning with the Battle of Antietam, he noted how armies would direct their ammunition at trees and added that for infantry lines to be effective, " everybody had to be a righty ." The historian then talked about the ability to attack at night, and how it did not happen often. He went on to briefly discuss the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment before giving the film a 9 out of 10, later stating: " My favorite Civil War battle scene that I watched today was definitely Glory. " Read Adelman's comments regarding Glory below:

The stakes are high at the Battle of Antietam. For the South, they’re coming off of a string of victories. It’s possible that if they win again maybe the European powers will start recognizing the Confederacy. For the North, they’re on the losing streak. They really need to turn back Robert E. Lee’s powerful Confederate Army while they have the chance and give Abraham Lincoln the opportunity to issue his Emancipation Proclamation, changing, changing the purpose and direction of the war… Artillerists, to be sure, were cognizant of the horror that tree limbs raining down onto troops could cause among the morale and the health of the troops attacking them, so absolutely they would sometimes shoot into the trees with that deliberate idea of wounding and demoralizing the enemy… The most seasoned commanders are going to try to get their troops as close to the enemy as possible before returning fire and closing up their line and shrinking their lines so that they continue to be shoulder to shoulder amidst the chaos of a battle and wait until you got to the enemy to deliver a killing blow… In an infantry line, everybody has to be a righty because if you shoot in two ranks, you’ve got two heads in front of you and if you’re right behind somebody, if you’re a righty, you’re going to shoot between the two heads in front of you. If you’re a lefty, that gun’s going to go straight into the head of the person in front of you, and butt up against the gun to the person to your right, and the other thing you needed was a trigger finger, and you needed two front teeth in order to tear off the cartridge to pour the powder into your gun. Night fighting in the Civil War is a pretty rare thing. The whole tactical setup of the Civil War is to be able to see things, to be able to see your enemy, for your troops to be able to see your flag. It was hard to issue bugle commands among the din of battles, so line of sight was very important, but they fought at night when they needed to, and some of the Battle of Fort Wagner was indeed fought in the evening and if I’m an attacking force, I would love to have as Colonel Shaw says, ‘We will advance under cover of darkness.’ That’s exactly what I would do… In the Battle of Fort Wagner, you have the most notable combat with Black soldiers up to that time. The 54th Massachusetts made it into Fort Wagner, but as many Civil War soldiers found out, getting into a place and holding and controlling a place are two very different things. I’m going to rate them a nine. This one brought in a lot of the elements you needed to understand the scene, to show what combat was like in the Civil War. Is it perfect? No. Is it perfect enough? Yes!

Why Glory Has Received So Much Praise

Glory features many accurate elements, as Adelman touched on, including the depiction of certain battles and military tactics used during the Civil War. The movie opens with the Battle of Antietam, which introduces audiences to Broderick's character, a real commanding officer in the Union Army who led the 54th Massachusetts. While Silas and other characters that made up that unit in the movie were fictional, some of the men had come from slave states.

The story of Glory has been praised over the years, and the Battle of Fort Wagner made for an emotional ending. Many audiences also pointed to its settings and focus on Black American soldiers as a positive, though there has been discourse surrounding the size of Colonel Shaw's role. At the 62nd Academy Awards, Glory took home wins for Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound.

Washington has an impressive acting career , and his work on Glory has been celebrated since its 1989 release. It's interesting to hear Adelman's comments about the movie, and what it was able to accurately present about the Civil War. As he noted, Glory incorporated a lot of detail that, while not exactly flawless, came fairly close.

Source: Insider

Spy Series ‘Slow Horses’ Returns for Its Fourth Season in all its Sweary Glory

The series, which adapts Mick Herron’s bestselling novels about a group of intelligence agents exiled to a low-rent office, is full of typically spiky dialogue.

Gary Oldman in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

Returning for its fourth season with one episode on September 4th, ‘ Slow Horses ’ continues to prove itself as one of the best series on offer via the Apple TV+ service.

In fact, Apple has clearly been so happy with the viewership of the show, and so willing to future-proof the availability of its cast, that it has been shooting two seasons at once. A fifth is already in the works, and the start of the fourth indicates that it has lost none of the unpredictable, grungy and satisfyingly British style that fans have come to enjoy.

Related Article: TV Review: 'Slow Horses' Season 3

Does ‘slow horses’ season 4 succeed in its mission.

Jack Lowden in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

While there’s little doubt that the key to ‘Slow Horses’ appeal is Gary Oldman having the time of his life as the grubby, greasy, but incredibly sharp agent Jackson Lamb (the actor has scored a welcome first Emmy nomination for the role following Season 3), the show still doesn’t lazily rely on the performance and the character, evolving each season to embrace new personalities and expanded storylines, while maintaining what works.

For Season 4, that more-of-the-same-with-a-twist approach shows no sign of faltering, and indeed, the initial episodes –– we’ll only really discuss the first here as that’s the one landing on premiere day –– are suitably excellent.

‘Slow Horses’ Season 4: Script and Direction

(L to R) Ruth Bradley and Gary Oldman in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

Led by Will Smith (a writer and former stand-up with experience on Armando Iannucci ’s shows, not the movie star), the series’ writing team is always on point, using Mick Herron’s novels as a starting point for the basic structure of each season and then expanding from there, but always in organic fashion.

It may not always be as action-packed as other shows (though it certainly has its moments –– witness the traumatic bomb attack that opens this season), when you have dialogue that crackles like this, you don’t need every space to be filled with someone waving a gun. And in the mouths of Oldman and the rest of the game cast, it’s always guaranteed to make you laugh or gasp… sometimes at the same time.

On the visual side of things, the show benefits from having both a more limited number of episodes per season (usually six) and one director through the whole batch, meaning that the show –– also thanks to a hefty budget from Apple –– ends up looking like a movie cut into TV-sized chunks. The environs of Slough House, the low-rent office where Lamb and co. are based, are wonderfully scruffy and evocative, in stark contrast to the polished glass and cold concrete of MI5’s main Regent’s Park HQ.

And the show uses London’s variety of landscapes and neighborhoods, plus other areas in the UK, to great effect. In Season’s 4 case, the man in charge of the show’s look is Adam Randall, who fits in well with the overall style.

‘Slow Horses’ Season 4: Performances

Oldman might rightfully score the lion’s share of the plaudits, but there is a wider ensemble all putting in great performances.

Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb

Oldman has repeatedly said that he’s having the time of his life playing the grumpy, cynical and endlessly mucky head of Slough House, and that energy seeps out of every pore. The vanity-free performance (Lamb is frequently seen with lanky hair, grease stains and mismatched clothing), is a truly memorable one, the slovenly appearance the perfect camouflage for a truly inspired spy mind.

Jack Lowden as River Cartwright

While he was the audience surrogate character at the start, the young agent banished to Slough House after a training mission goes wrong, River has grown into a great sidekick for Lamb, and an impressive character in his own right. And Lowden brings a superb blend of world-weariness and enthusiasm to the role.

Jonathan Pryce as David Cartwright

Jonathan Pryce in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

Though the elder Cartwright has mostly been a supporting character in earlier seasons, it’s easy to see why Smith chose an experienced thespian like Pryce to play him; because he knew that David would become much more important down the line. And Pryce brings a potent combo of wise elder former agent and humbled aging grandfather to the part, which expands here.

Kristin Scott Thomas as Diana Taverner

Kristin Scott Thomas in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

Few people can do withering putdowns like Thomas, and in Taverner, she’s found the ideal outlet. A canny, ice-cold professional, she’s forever frustrated by the hapless government types she’s forced to deal with. And her endlessly watchable interactions with Oldman are often a highlight of each season.

Other notable characters

(L to R) Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Christopher Chung, Tom Brooke, Kadiff Kirwan and Rosalind Eleazar in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

The rest of the Slough House ensemble all get their moments in the sun, and this fourth season includes a healthy influx of new characters (since in this show, a long life expectancy is never guaranteed). Highlights of the new episodes include Joanna Scanlan (like showrunner Smith, a veteran of Armando Iannucci’s shows) as the eager-to-please Moira and Tom Brooke as JK, a mysterious and honestly weird fresh addition to the office. And not forgetting James Callis as Claude Whelan, the nervous, officious new First Desk of MI5 and a great foil for Taverner.

‘Slow Horses’ Season 4: Final Thoughts

‘Slow Horses’ creative team have said they’ll happily keep making the show as long as Apple wants them to (and Mick Herron keeps writing books to adapt, with the author up to eight and counting), and that’s welcome news.

If only more series were as consistently entertaining, and this still full of steam when their fourth seasons rolled around, the TV landscape would be in much better shape.

‘Slow Horses’ Season 4 receives 8.5 out of 10 stars.

Slow Horses

What’s the story of ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4?

Adapted from Mick Herron’s ‘Slow Horses’ novel ‘Spook Street’, Season 4 opens as a bomb has exploded in a shopping center in London and MI5 is racing to figure out who is responsible. Second Desk (the second-in-command of the intelligence service) Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) must balance the demands of the investigation with effectively babysitting the nervy new First Desk (James Callis).

As for those at Slough House, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is faced with his grandfather David’s (Jonathan Pryce) increasingly fragile mental condition, compounded by a new mystery that could threaten both their lives. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), meanwhile, is his same old, irascible self, happy to endlessly mock his team of exiled agents, but also fiercely loyal when it comes to protecting them.

And he’ll need to, as a face from the past has returned to cause trouble…

Who else is in the cast of ‘Slow Horses’ Season 4?

The new season’s cast also includes the returning likes of Christopher Chung , Rosalind Eleazar , Aimee-Ffion Edwards , Saskia Reeves and Kadiff Kirwan , along with new recruits Joanna Scanlan, Tom Brooke and Hugo Weaving .

Hugo Weaving in 'Slow Horses' season 4 now streaming on Apple TV+.

Movies Similar to 'Slow Horses':

• ' The Avengers ' (1998)
• ' RED ' (2010)
• ' Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ' (2011)
• ' Skyfall ' (2012)
• ' The Sweeney ' (2013)
• ' Spy ' (2015)
• ' Kingsman: The Secret Service ' (2015)
• ' The Man from U.N.C.L.E .' (2015)
• ‘ The Gray Man ' (2022)
• ' Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre ' (2023)

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‘beetlejuice beetlejuice’ review: winona ryder and michael keaton help tim burton rediscover the ghoulish mischief of his glory days.

Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega and Justin Theroux also star in the Venice opener, a sequel to the 1988 horror comedy about a renegade “bio-exorcist” liberated from the afterlife.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Any sequel coming 36 years after its predecessor is best approached with caution, this one especially so given that with the main exception of 2012’s Frankenweenie , Burton seemed to have misplaced his mojo somewhere around the turn of the new century — at least for this critic.

Tapping into the maniacally playful spirit of one of his enduring golden-era hits, the director seems reinvigorated. He serves up comparable tonic as well for two actors who were a big part not just of the original Beetlejuice but also of Burton’s Batman movies and Edward Scissorhands : Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder , respectively. The name in the credits of a second Batman Returns alum is no secret, but that actor’s droll extended cameo merits spoiler treatment.

Hollywood’s cynical strip-mining of successful IP in its quest for the everlasting franchise has taught us to be suspicious, so there’s something restorative for the audience, too, in experiencing a resuscitated screen property that’s actually fun — not to mention one that asserts its own reason to exist.

Warner Bros. has been trying on and off to make a sequel happen since the early ’90s, most notably after the studio in 2011 hired Seth Grahame-Smith, who shares story credit here with screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Burton’s success pulling off such a zesty follow-up after so many years on the shelf is due as much to those writers, with whom he worked on Netflix’s Wednesday . That series’ star, Jenna Ortega , is chief among welcome new additions to the holdover crew of Keaton, Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and shrunken-headed Bob.

Still wearing the jagged black bangs she rocked as a goth teen, Ryder’s Lydia Deetz is now a widowed mother famous for hosting a reality show called Ghost House , where from a studio attic set she invites viewers to “Come in, if you dare.” Mimicking the formula of countless paranormal shows, Lydia coaxes guests to share chilling experiences of unexplained phenomena in their homes. But a triggering vision of Keaton’s Beetlejuice sitting among the studio audience reveals that the psychic mediator has not put her own haunted past behind her.

Tensions between Lydia and her artist stepmother Delia (O’Hara) have eased over the years, despite the latter becoming even more self-absorbed in her shift from sculpture into mixed media. Her latest show is called The Human Canvas , and that canvas of course is Delia’s face and body.

The writers find a crafty solution to the awkward question of what to do about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Jones, who played Lydia’s father, Charles. In a spry Claymation sequence that’s classic Burton, we learn of Charles’ recent gruesome death — though naturally in the Beetlejuice world, death is more a pitstop than a destination, so the character lingers even if his original physical form is erased.

Barbara and Adam Maitland, the sweet, prematurely deceased couple played by Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin, are gone, however, as Lydia explains they’ve found a loophole. “How convenient,” scoffs Astrid, with a wink from the writers.

Charles’ funeral — whimsically accompanied by a boys choir singing a hymnal version of Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O,” another lovely callback — brings the family back to Winter River. Accompanying them is Lydia’s producer and soon-to-be fiancé, Rory ( Justin Theroux ), whose ridiculous tiny ponytail tags him as a phony, and whose “New Age, over-bonding, yoga-retreat bullshit” Astrid finds beneath contempt.

While all this is going on, Bellucci’s Delores is terrorizing the netherworld, killing denizens “dead-dead” on her mission to claim the rotten soul of her husband, Beetlejuice. In a riotous touch that got huge laughs at the Venice press screening, their short-lived ghost marriage is recapped as a black-and-white, subtitled Italian mini-movie. Investigating Delores’ trail of destruction is Wolf Jackson ( Willem Dafoe ), a former TV action star now playing detective, with lots of cheesy direct-to-camera glances for dramatic emphasis.

The living (or “fleshbags,” as Jackson calls them) and the dead get tangled up when Astrid is tricked into a potentially fatal pact and Lydia is forced to summon Beetlejuice to help her cross over and save her daughter. Given that Beetlejuice doesn’t believe in free favors, an alternative wedding plan emerges to rescue him from Delores, a nightmarish scenario in which Lydia’s familiarity with the predatory sandworms of the afterlife’s exile desertscape comes in handy.

The zippy pacing, buoyant energy and steady stream of laugh-out-loud moments hint at the joy Burton appears to have found in revisiting this world, and for anyone who loved the first movie, it’s contagious. That applies also to the actors, all of whom warm to the dizzying lunacy.

His most exhilarating sequences include a stint as a trickster couples counselor when Rory decides Lydia needs to face “this construct of your trauma.” (The uproarious birth of a diabolical baby Beetlejuice during that scene yields one of animatronics chief Neal Scanlan’s most brilliant creations.)

If the use of Belafonte’s “Day-O” was a memorable high point of Beetlejuice , what the filmmakers and Keaton do with “MacArthur Park” in a wedding-from-hell climax takes the possessed lip-syncing and dance moves several steps further. The wedding cake with “sweet green icing flowing down” is a jubilant celebration of some of the daffiest lyrics ever set to music. And the fate of an assembly of cellphone-clutching influencers gathered in the church by Rory (“Nothing less than 5 million followers”) will bring bliss to anyone who ever rolled their eyes about that “career” path.

Ryder goes beat for beat with Keaton as the yin of the movie to his rancidly irreverant yang. The actress transports us back to the enchanting screen persona of her late teens, not just in Beetlejuice but also in movies like Edward Scissorhands , Mermaids and Heathers , in which she radiated a singular mix of smarts, sweetness and innocence but was just as effective when she veered into darkness. As much as anything, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a poignant mother-daughter story, played with real heart by both Ryder and Ortega.

CG work is no doubt extensive but one of the sequel’s charms is how much its physical sets, puppetry and phantasmagoria stick to a hand-crafted look in line with the far more limited effects tools available in the late ’80s. It’s rewarding to have Burton back in full creative command of the humor, the fantastical imagination and the gleeful morbidity on which he built his name.

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A war between church and state

Andy Garcia in "For Greater Glory."

In the years 1926 through 1929, Mexico fought a war over the freedom of Roman Catholics to worship. As a result of the Mexican Revolution, the constitution of 1917 stripped great power from the church, along with half of its enormous land holdings. But it was not until the regime of President Plutarco Elias Calles, who began to strictly enforce the constitution, that an uprising ensued. Supporters of the Catholic Church, who called themselves Cristeros, began a campaign against federal troops and had surprising success after they hired Gen. Enrique Gorostieta Velarde to lead their forces.

An atheist and a hero of the revolution, Gorostieta signed on for the cash and because he supported the principle of religious freedom. In the context of a new English-language epic called “For Greater Glory,” that principle apparently applies only to Catholics. No other religion is ever mentioned. The war took heavy casualties on both sides, and the United States played a behind-the-scenes role in protecting the interests of U.S. oil companies whose concessions controlled much of Mexico’s oil.

This war has all the elements to make it well-known, but I confess I’d never heard of it. A close Mexican-American friend, well-informed in Mexican history, told me she never has, either. Is it in the usual history books? You’ll learn a lot about it in “For Greater Glory,” the most expensive film ever made in Mexico, an ambitious production with a cast filled with stars.

It is well-made, yes, but has such pro-Catholic tunnel vision I began to question its view of events. One important subplot involves a 12-year-old boy choosing to die for his faith. Of course the federal troops who shot him were monsters, but the film seems to approve of his decision and includes him approvingly in a long list of Cristeros who have achieved sainthood or beatification after their deaths in the war.

The central figure is Gorostieta, played by Andy Garcia with impressive strength and presence. He values his own leadership expertise, defends the fact that he is serving because of the money, and indeed is a brilliant general. There’s an effective sequence where he warns a jealous Cristeros leader he is probably leading his men into an ambush. The man won’t listen. Gorostieta lets him go, and then leads his own troops up behind the ambushing federales, who are exactly where he predicted they would be.

President Calles ( Ruben Blades ), who can’t believe the Cristeros can possibly be successful, pursues the war beyond what seems to be all common sense. It’s one thing to enforce legal restraints on the Catholic Church and another — a riskier one — to order such extremes as sending all the bishops and foreign-born clergy out of the country and authorizing the murder of priests in their own churches. In an early sequence, Peter O'Toole plays a 77-year-old priest killed by the federales, and it is Jose, the altar boy who sees him die, who later becomes the martyr.

So dedicated are Jose and a young friend to the Cristeros cause that they ride out on horseback and find the secret camp of Gen. Gorostieta. He rejects them as soldiers and puts them to work caring for horses. But his love for the boy grows so much that he regards him as a son, and indeed the boy only dies because he is on a mission for Gorostieta. The general surely deserves some of the blame for putting a child in a hazardous position.

“For Greater Glory” is the kind of long, expensive epic not much made any more. It bears the hallmarks of being a labor of love. I suspect it’s too long for some audiences. It is also very heavy on battle scenes, in which the Cristeros seem to have uncannily good aim. But in its use of locations and sets, it’s an impressive achievement by director Dean Wright , whose credits include some of the effects on the “Lord of the Rings” films. If it had not hewed so singlemindedly to the Catholic view and included all religions under the banner of religious liberty, I believe it would have been more effective. If your religion doesn’t respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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• Ruben Blades as President Calles

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• Michael Love

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Glory (1989) Movie: Summary and Review

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Glory captures the heroism of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the first black regiment in the Civil War, the Massachusetts “Fighting” Fifty-fourth.  An extremely talented cast and crew earned three Academy Awards (cinematography, sound and supporting actor) and five nominations for their work in Glory.  The outstanding cinematography, sound, score and acting recreate the events leading up to the Union attack on Fort Wagner on July 18th 1863.

Matthew Broderick portrays the young Bostonian abolitionist Col. Robert G. Shaw who takes command of the Fifty-fourth, following the Emancipation Proclamation.  Shaw along with Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes) leads a band of ex-slaves, servants and other black volunteers including a rebellious runaway slave Trip (Denzel Washington), Shaw’s educated childhood friend Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), and a former gravedigger Rawlins (Morgan Freeman).  

Together these men face the adversity of a racist Union Army, struggling to prove themselves worthy of their government-issued blue uniforms.  After months of training and exploitation for physical labor, the Fifty-fourth gains the opportunity to fight in an attack on Fort Wagner on the beaches of South Carolina.  

Poised to dispel the belief that blacks would not be disciplined under fire, the Fifty-fourth leads the almost suicidal attack on Ft. Wagner.  There Col. Shaw valiantly falls and the Fifty-fourth, suffering great losses, displayed the courage that persuaded the Union to enlist many more black soldiers.  

Matthew Broderick delivers a noteworthy performance in the role of Col. Shaw, which Leonard Maltin calls his most ambitious part.  In an interview for the New York Times, Broderick spoke of his method acting,  “The first step [in preparing for the role of Robert Gould Shaw in Glory] was to try to learn as much as I could about the real person.  

That was mostly from letters, photographs, descriptions, and a poem by Emerson.  The thing I had to do was bring myself into that situation.  I didn’t want to be an imitation of what I thought Shaw must have been like.”  Broderick’s acting talent has been noted on Broadway as well as in films.  Broderick won a Tony Award for his performance in “Brighton Beach Memoirs” in 1983, a year after his film debut in Max Dugan Returns. (Maltin, 102)

But it was his role as a computer hacker in War Games and his role as a handsome young teen touring Chicago in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that alerted moviegoers to his talent.  Denzel Washington has received critical acclaim for his role as Trip (as well as an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor).

Denzel commented on the role of Trip in an interview with the New York Times.  “Trip’s an instigator – wild, rebellious, angry.  He’s a product of racism who’s become a racist. He hates all white people, Confederates most of all. But in the end, when he sees the white officers make the maximum sacrifice, he’s the most patriotic one in the bunch.”  

Director of Glory, Edward Zwick described Washington by stating, “Whatever that mysterious chemical process is that makes the camera love someone, he has more of it than any one person should.”(Maltin, 921)  It is that presence that earned him an Oscar for Glory and nominations for his roles in Cry Freedom and Malcolm X.  

Equally as important as acting to the impact of the movie Glory is the Musical score composed by James Horner.  In the final battle scene in Glory, Horner chose the Boys Choir of Harlem which creates a moving effect during the death of Col. Robert Shaw. (Magill, 158)  Horner won a Grammy Award for the score for Glory.

He was nominated the same year for an Academy Award for the score for Field of Dreams.  Horner’s previous Grammy Awards include a song of the year and best song written for a motion picture or television, all for “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tale in 1987. (CTFT, 228)  Leonard Maltin calls Horner one of today’s most prolific film composers.  

Horner composed thirty-one motion picture scores from 1979 to 1989. (Maltin, 411)  There are many elements that contribute to the success of a film.  Glory combines the best cinematography, sound, score, and acting to create a moving representation of this portion of U. S. history.  Roger Ebert called it a “strong and valuable film.”  

In his review written for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert notes the amount of effort devoted to accurate period detail.  One of Ebert’s criticisms of Glory is that the perspective of the movie is constantly seen from one view, that of the white officer.  Ebert points out that a white man is cast as the lead role when the movie is essentially about a black experience.  Glory could have been told from the eyes of a black soldier in the Fifty-fourth.  Ebert makes a valid assumption when he suggests that a totally different film could be made from the same material.  

Indeed Glory is a story of how the freed blacks were able to prove themselves in battle.  The Fifty-fourth regiment could also be considered one of the first times we see blacks look for equal opportunity.  Ebert notes the scene when the black soldiers of the Fifty-fourth learn they will not be paid the regular (white) wage.  “Blacks march as far, bleed as much and die as soon, they argue.”(Ebert)  It would be 100 years later that they gained equal opportunity when in Vietnam both black and white soldiers were interspersed in the military.

While Roger Ebert discusses the idea of a different point of view he notes that Glory is an important film no matter whose eyes it is seen from.  Blake Lukas on the other hand is far more critical of the film.  In Lukas’ review for Magill’s Cinema Annual, he picks at elements of the film, including weak characterization and directing that leaves something to be desired.  Lukas seems at times to be lost in his own rhetoric when he writes about the dismal war genre.  

He delves into the number of Vietnam films that are “a far more popular subject in this period.”(Magill, 155)  After a brief synopsis of the film, Lukas comments on the dynamics of the protagonist character who we see mature through the film.  The remaining characters Lukas believes lack dimension.  He calls the role of Cabot Forbes “fleetingly interesting”  and the role of Trip, (which Denzel Washington won Best Supporting Actor for) “predictable.”  

He goes on further to say that the role of Rawlins portrayed by Morgan Freeman is only enlightened by this “brilliant actor’s own characteristic intelligence.”  Therefore without the phenomenal acting talent presented in Glory Lukas feels the movie would be flat.  In addition to finding flaws in the characterization, Lukas compares director Edward Zwick to the director John Ford.  Ford directed earlier Civil War films such as The Horse Soldiers(1959) or Sergeant Rutledge (1960)which based on the all-black cavalry regiment in the Civil War.  

Lukas suggests that Ford was able to attain a “thematic richness” that eluded Zwick.  Lukas also remarks that Zwick used ineffective “emphasis on close-ups and shallow focus which do little to make the film’s historical moment seem …alive in spite of admirable attention to detail in the art direction sets and costumes.”  

Lukas is impressed however by Zwick’s direction of the final scene in which he uses “vigorous tracking shots”  to create a “stunning effect.”  Lukas also comments on James Horner’s inventive use of the Boy’s Choir of Harlem. Lukas suggests that Zwick looked to appeal to contemporary audiences.  Interestingly enough Lukas is surprised that Glory met with such “critical and commercial success.”  Lukas also seems hung up on the past.  he makes two comments which seem out of place.  

First, when comparing Zwick to Ford he states that Zwick does not attempt the same “thematic richness” and that “(Zwick’s) sensibilities are more attuned with the responses of the 1989 audiences.”  I don’t think Zwick should be faulted for creating a film that is appealing to contemporary audiences.”  I certainly would not go see a film directed by Lukas.  

Desson Howe reviewing Glory for the Washington Post like Lukas notes that the scriptwriter Jarre (whose credits include Rambo: First Blood Part II) provides only a superficial characterization “his script is made better by the performers.” Howe believes that the is too much “liberal eyed giddiness (thanks chiefly to the gushy, rhapsodizing score by James Horner).”  Both Ebert and Lukas acclaim Broderick’s performance of Shaw, yet Howe criticizes it writing, “In this movie he is an amiable non-presence, creating unintentionally the notion that he Fifty-fourth earned its stripes despite wimpy leadership.”  

This comment leads me to wonder whether Howe and I saw the same movie.  Howe notes that the performance of Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman uplift the film.  Perhaps the reviewers did not have the luxury of time to research the history of Robert Gould Shaw or the Fifty-fourth.  If so they would have found that Shaw was indeed a youthful officer given charge of the Fifty-Fourth as Colonel at the age of 26.  

Understanding Shaw’s philosophical views as an abolitionist and the societal views of blacks being subservient to whites, certainly a young man leading the first black regiment would experience a certain degree of self-doubt and contradiction.  In the end, Shaw develops the courage to lead his men into battle to a symbolic triumph displaying the bravery of these black soldiers.  Broderick’s portrayal of Shaw is credible from my point of view.  

The credibility of Glory is heightened by the amount of effort devoted to recreating the historical details.  From the camps to the costumes Glory captures the aura of battle.  Most of the critics agree that the historical detail was a redeeming element of the film.  Glory is a film that balances its shortcomings out with exceptional talent.  Perhaps a lack of dimension in the characters is balanced with outstanding performances.  

Any faults in the directing are made up by the detail put into the film and the superior sound and score.  Glory is a carefully constructed film with a didactic theme. It is an accurate representation of the lives of Civil War soldiers.  The climax of the movie is fairly accurately represented.  

The Fifty-fourth regiment had slightly over five hundred members when they marched into battle on July 18th, 1863.  Over two hundred and fifty members of the regiment died in that battle and several more were injured.  That is what proved to the white regiments looking on that the black soldiers were worthy of battle.  Glory captures that triumph.

Bibliography

Contemporary  Theatre, Film and Television.  Detroit: Gale Research, Volume 10  

Ebert, Roger. The Chicago Sun-Times, January 12, 1990  

Howe, Desson. The Washington Post, January 12, 1990  

Lukas, Blake. Magill’s Cinema Annual 1990,  Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1990  

Maltin, Leonard.  Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia,  The Penguin Publishing Company, New York, NY 1994.

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