Gods and Generals Reviews

Not so long ago, I have seen ‘Gettysburg’ and even though it was a tough watch (at 4 hours long, it is the longest US production released theatrically), it was still pretty good so I was quite eager to check this 2nd installment. In fact, it is a prequel showing what happened in the years just before this famous battle and, to be honest, it wasn’t really good I’m afraid. Again, they made a very long and a realistic film full of historical details but I really had a hard time to care about the whole thing this time. They decided to focus on Stonewall Jackson which wasn’t really a bad idea since he was one of the most famous generals involved in the Civil War but why on Earth did they cast Stephen Lang who played already a completely different part in ‘Gettysburg’?!? That was so distracting, I think it took me at least 45 minutes to realize he was actually someone else. The other issue is that they thought it would be a good idea to show the life of the people behind the frontline, like in ‘The Birth of a Nation’, but those scenes were really tedious with some really pathetic dialogs. Finally, this time, they managed to bring 2 black characters but they were so poorly developed and stereotypical, it was borderline insulting. To conclude, the whole thing is rather a failure and I don’t think it is really worth a look.

I could only get through the first 5 or 6 minutes of this film (after the 5 minutes of introduction almost sent me away). It's been a while since I've so quickly lost interest in a film so quickly.