Review of Gods and Generals (2003) by Bill C — 10 Sep 2010

This is a movie specifically about Thomas Stonewall Jackson. It gets lost on other unsatisfying plots along the way, but it is a story about an annoyingly fervent religious General with such poor character development not seen since Charlton Heston played Moses.

The best part of this movie was that the jacket lists its length as almost 3 hr and 45 minutes and the movie runtime is 3 hours and 23 Minutes unless you want to watch 22 minutes of credit. It is self-aggrandizing to the point where there are scenes without cut for 5-7 minutes of men tied down by enemy fire using there fallen patriots as shields just sitting still and not talking.

Just trying to avoid the bullets passing though their expired bodies. Except for Robert Duvall the dialog between the actors is so utterly unnatural human speech, that at first I just listened to it slack-jaw.

Then I estimated they must have pieced it together from actual letter written by the historical figures. Then 15 minutes had passed and I realized I had to sit through another 3+ hours of this tripe. Jeff Daniels as a Yankee officer is some what palatable through the movie, but the arc of his story is left hanging or I fell asleep.

This is the second movie in a trilogy. Maybe in the third we find out that Robert E Lee is his father.