Rating: 
Summary: Excellent movie!!
Review: This is truly a piece of living history. I found it to be entertaining and very historically accurate. A very good movie! If you want typical hollywood action this is not for you. If you like history this is a must see!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Stonewall and some other people!
Review: This movie was good, but it was full of sound bites and "grandiose speeches for posterity" dialogue. It centered on Stonewall Jackson's pious faith in God. It seemed that Robert Duvall, was just a "special appearance" character for his short role in the film. The rest was history, as history is written,with good battle scenes and great re-enactments. I hope the next movie is an improvement from this one.
Rating:
Summary: liberals go away
Review: Ok first off I saw this movie and thoroughly enjoyed. However, I cannot stand reading reviews by people who do nothing but complain. Some slaves returned to their "masters" after the civil war to continue to work for them! Slavery as an institution is bad and though not excusable there were slave owners who treated their slaves with respect while you had your bad lot as well. Please don't believe I'm advocating or you are an idiot. South went to war with the north cause they were being driven into nothing financially by the feds. This war was about economics, freedom, fairness, and self rule....the south rebelled and that does not make them traitors....that was not law at the time only after the war was secession made illegal. If you honestly believe Lincoln gave two nuggets about the black and poor down trodden slaves you are a fool....this war had nothing to do with slavery...but all the complaints by idiots is nothing more than garbage and should be ignored. Its just like the left to lie, they distort everything to gain advantage....Then you have reality and they are just so appalled and begin their propaganda machine.
Rating:
Summary: I wanted to love this movie but.....
Review: Having read the book trilogy by the Shaara's, I was really looking forward to this movie. However, it came up short. I felt detached throughout, not like in the book where the reader was really thinking along with the generals. The movie is long personal soliloquies followed by the battle scenes. Strategy is rarely discussed. Why are the armies where they are? Who has the upper hand? These things are rarely discussed. The movie jumps from Monassas to Fredericksburg (1.5 yrs. in between) with no mention of what happened in between. I'm afraid that people who haven't read the book or don't have civil war knowledge will feel lost. Gettysburg is the far better movie. This is a solid movie but as so often happens leaves the book reader disappointed with the translation from book to movie.
Rating:
Summary: The Best "Civil War" Epic Ever...PERIOD!
Review: I was in the seventh grade when this film was first rumoured to be in production. Soon after, the official web site was created by Warner Bros., followed by several CNN news updates as to the content and release of the film. My teacher and I anticipated this film more than any other of the year. When it was finally released, I flocked to see it. I WAS SHOCKED! I'm not the kind of person who enjoys long movies most of the time. Short and sweet is perfectly fine with me. But WOW!!! I've been a Civil War buff for quite some time. I was amazed at how meticulous the director was to details. Everything, down to the layout of the cities, was correct. Whole segments of the film were taken straight from log books and journals of the time, down to every last word and event. But best of all, it wasn't boring! No way! A four-hour movie that I liked?! You gotta be kidding me! I was so enthralled that I found the novel, "Killer Angels" (the initial inspiration for the film/book trilogy) and read it. I'm re-reading it for the third time this year. PLOT: The events of the Civil War leading up to the battle of Gettysburg involve three important men: Robert Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, and Lawrence Chamberlain. Their lives play out amongst war, bloodshed, and human drama unlike you've ever seen... PROS: Meticulous to accuracy, entertaining, quick-pacing, action-packed... CONS: No scenes or references to the battle of Antietam (Ron Maxwell, the writer/producer/director, has made the statement that a 6 hour version will be released sometime this year, featuring the bloodiest one-day battle of the war)...
Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT MOVIE!!!
Review: Definitely a great epic Civil War movie and one of my personal favorites, Gods and Generals, brings to the screen three of the most important battles of the early stages of the War: Manassas/Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. In addition, the movie portrays General "Stonewall" Jackson (played superbly by Stephen Lang) in great detail, both as a man and as a general, providing an important insight on one of the key figures of this military conflict. Gods and Generals is a movie about honor, bravery, fear, and heroes who fought and died in the name of Freedom and above all, love- love of country. There is one scene in particular in which Irishmen fight Irishmen on opposite sides of the battlefield which will bring tears to the eyes of most. A great movie indeed!
Rating: 
Summary: Possibly the Worst Movie Ever
Review: I couldn't get through this movie. The battle scenes are realistic, but that's about all that is realistic. The dialogue is comical, the characters are wooden stereotypes and the melodrama is the cheesiest I've seen in a movie made after the 1930's. According to this movie, the blacks were all happy living as slaves and loyal to the states the enslaved them, the whites treated the slaves like family, everyone in the south was against slavery and the God fearing confederates did absolutely nothing to provoke a northern invasion. Now let's get history straight; the southern states rebelled because the nation elected a republican, the south wanted to expand slavery into the frontier territories, the south's entire economy depended on slavery and it was the rebels that fired the first shots in the civil war. I would also mention that based on the numbers of liberated slaves that took up arms against the confederates, I doubt they were as loyal to their states as the movie would have you believe. I even found fault with the battle scenes. Unfortunately when you use Civil War reenactors as extras, you get a lot of fat old men. I would imagine that not too many soldiers were fat, and at this early stage in the war the rebel army was not yet taking old men. .
Rating:
Summary: Meandering Script Hurts Otherwise Beautiful Film
Review: I'm afriad I have to agree with Gregory S. Suszkowski on several points. "Gods & Generals" is replete with flowery speaches and simply unrealistic dialogue that do nothing to propel the movie forward. Great movies demonstrate inner conflict, they do not release it in extended verbiage (see Matthew Broderick or Morgan Freeman in "Glory").
Now, that being said, I must admit that there is a lot to like about "Gods & Generals". Stephen Lang gives a classic performance here as General Thomas Jackson. Even though he, too, must grandstand occasionally with the rash of long rhetoric, he does it passionately and with so much color that if I ever meet the real Stonewall Jackson I will have a hard time with it if he is nothing like the character in this film.
Likewise, Robert Duvall seemed born to play the part of Robert E. Lee -- but you know he's going to be good, you expect it.
The underated Jeff Daniels turns in an acceptable performance as Lt. Chamberlain, but again, he is saddled with some, uh, "spacious" dialogues (the script almost becomes cartoonish when he is telling his wife he will be serving).
But who cares, the battle scenes are phenomenal! This movie is an optical masterpiece, not only with the battle scenes but the way these 19th century towns are brought to life. It's worth watching (i've seen it 3 times), I just wish it wasn't so encumbered with so much ridiculous dialogue.
Rating:
Summary: Great film
Review: Although I am life-long Civil War buff, I have always had difficulty understanding how a man could take up arms against neighbors and relatives of another state. Gods and Generals allowed me the experience of appreciating the human side of this war and insight into the historical and spiritual complexities that haunted each side. The result was overwelmingly powerful.
I've seen the film several times and discovered new meaning and understanding with each viewing. It is rich, alive and authentic film making.
Rating:
Summary: a provocative film
Review: Gods and Generals struck a raw nerve in the body politic. That's because when it comes to the Civil War people have already taken sides, often times without even knowing it. Most have assimilated and accepted the official, public education version of what happened as an article of faith. Abraham Lincoln is not just a man with flaws and qualities, not simply a shrewd politician and formidable leader. In this sub-conscious universe he has been elevated to the position of a deity. To question the received wisdom is to question one's very existence. One has only to read many of the reviews in these pages to see the glib facility with which many have swallowed, hook, line and sinker the triumphalist propaganda always spread and taught by the victors - in all places at all times. It is just too discomfiting to think, even for a moment, that the American Civil War may not have been necessary. That all those lives need not have been lost. That all the destruction need not have taken place. That the horrible institution of slavery could and would have been abolished , as it was in the rest of the western hemisphere, by peaceful means. Gods and Generals is not a perfect film. I cannot disagree with many of the artistic criticisms leveled against it. Its distinction however, arises from its soul. It is perhaps the most rigorously honest historical film in recent memory. It is truly, not superficially provocative because it forces you to re-think everything. It is the only film on the present scene to have truly earned and deserves the label, anti-war. For its fierce artistic independence and its intellectual honesty I give it five stars.
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