Glory (1989)

Director: Edward Zwick

Writer: Robert Gould Shaw (letters), Lincoln Kirstein, Peter Burchard, Kevin Jarre

Cast: Matthew Broderick, Cary Elwes, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Andre Braugher, John Finn, Cliff De Young

Synopsis: "The negroes fought gallantly and were headed by as brave a Colonel as ever lived", was one Confederate soldier's eyewitness verdict on the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers immediately after 247 of their 600-man regiment had fallen in bloody swathes beneath the withering fire from Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina in 1863. Glory is their story: the mustering of the first black regiment in the US Army, their battles with the Southerners as well as with the Northern military authorities, and their own moment of glory when they paid a terrible price for the opportunity to demonstrate to the world their courage.

In telling this little-known story, director Ed Zwick single-handedly changed perceptions of the American Civil War: when a Grand Review of the Armies was held in Washington at the end of the war, none of the almost 180,000 coloured troops who fought for the Union were present; when that parade was restaged in 1990 a year after the movie was released, the 54th Massachusetts re-enactors were at the front of the procession.

Zwick's stirring, factually accurate account is greatly enhanced by obsessive period detail and frighteningly realistic battle reconstructions (which were not to be surpassed in scale until 1993's Gettysburg). But Zwick also illuminates individual characters in the regiment with great sensitivity. As crucial as the military set-pieces are the scenes of the men together: talking in the tent or baring their souls in song. Denzel Washington, as the embittered ex-slave, gives a performance of real depth; he richly deserved his Oscar win for the heartbreaking flogging scene alone. Morgan Freeman brings great gravitas to his paternalistic role, and Matthew Broderick's idealistic Colonel Shaw is the centre around which the story revolves.

With a clutch of remarkable lead performances, a sensitive and touching script, one of James Horner's finest musical scores, and a director with both the vision and heart to pull it off it's easy to agree with the backcover blurb: "Glory is one of the greatest war movies ever made". Without even a hint of hyperbole, it undoubtedly is.