10 / 10
Official trailer
Glory is the best American Civil War film and one of the great American war films of any era. Edward Zwick directed it. Matthew Broderick plays Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the twenty-five-year-old Boston abolitionist who commanded the 54th Massachusetts, the first official African-American regiment in the Union Army. Denzel Washington won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar playing Private Trip, a runaway slave with no patience for white officers. Morgan Freeman plays Sergeant Major Rawlins. Cary Elwes plays Major Forbes. Andre Braugher made his film debut as Corporal Thomas.
The film ends with the regiment’s frontal assault on Fort Wagner outside Charleston Harbor on July 18, 1863.
Most of them die, including Shaw. The Confederates dumped their bodies into a mass grave together, which Shaw’s father later said was the burial he would have wanted for his son. The film respects all of this and has the right to depict it.
Glory tears me apart. I can’t think of a Civil War film I’d put anywhere near it, and it belongs with the best war pictures Hollywood has made. It lets its soldiers be ordinary men first, arguing and stealing shoes and learning drill, and that choice makes the ending close to unbearable.
What Works
The structure is patient. The first hour follows the regiment’s training. The men aren’t idealized. They argue. They steal shoes from the supply officer. They learn drill. The script doesn’t pretend the regiment was uniformly heroic from day one. The men become soldiers across the runtime. That means the audience watches them earn what the final assault costs them.
Denzel Washington’s Trip is the performance I’d show anyone who doubts what a supporting role can do.
The whipping scene is the moment the film became a classic. Trip is being punished for desertion. The army strips him to the waist, and he stares at Shaw the entire time. His back has older scars. The audience and Shaw both realize at the same moment that somebody whipped Trip long before the army did. The scene is shot in long takes on Washington’s face, and I can barely stand to watch it.
For Writers
A scene’s emotional payload often arrives through what’s not said. Denzel Washington’s whipping scene contains almost no dialogue. The information the scene needs to convey lands through his face, the response on the officers’ faces, and the camera’s refusal to look away. The lesson is that emotional climax doesn’t require speeches. A character’s restraint, when the audience knows what’s being restrained, is more powerful than any line of dialogue could be. Trust the silence.
The Camp Fire Scene
The night before Fort Wagner, the regiment sings around a campfire.
Each soldier gives a moment. Trip says he’s never been an American. Sergeant Rawlins talks about being a gravedigger. Other men offer prayers, songs, and acknowledgements. The scene is the emotional spine of the film. Every character deserves to speak. Every speech matters because the audience knows where they’re going in the morning.
The campfire is my favorite scene in the film. Trip saying he’s never been an American, from a man whose back we’ve already seen, is the line that stays with me longest. The camp fire promise closes the film. The camera films the next day’s assault at a distance until it doesn’t. Shaw rides ahead of his men into the parapet. The film cuts to black. The mass grave appears. The score by James Horner closes the film. The audience understands what just happened without being told.
For Writers
Pre-battle scenes are dangerous. They invite cliché. The campfire sequence in Glory works because it doesn’t announce itself as a final reckoning. The men don’t give speeches about what they’ve learned. They share moments. The audience supplies the meaning. The lesson is that the most powerful pre-climax scenes don’t name themselves. They’re casual on the surface. The reader brings the weight to the scene because the reader knows what comes next.
The Fort Wagner Assault
The assault sequence is among the best Civil War battle scenes ever filmed. Shaw rides ahead. The regiment follows. The Confederate gunners on the parapet fire grape and canister. The Union troops climb the rampart. Most are killed. A handful, including Shaw, briefly reach the top. The Confederates kill them. The remnants of the regiment retreat.
The assault doesn’t succeed in any sense on screen, because historically it didn’t. The 54th Massachusetts took almost forty percent casualties in the attack. The fort didn’t fall, and the strategic outcome was a Union failure.
The film doesn’t dodge any of this, and I respect it enormously for refusing a fake victory. What the men accomplished was the attack itself, and the attack made it impossible for the rest of the country to deny that Black soldiers could fight.
For Writers
A historical defeat can be a satisfying ending if the film names what the defeat accomplished. Fort Wagner was a Union failure. The 54th Massachusetts was destroyed. Glory shows this without flinching. The meaning of the attack is in what the attack proved about the men attacking. The lesson is that endings don’t need to be victories to be earned. A loss that changes the world it occurred in is a stronger ending than a win that changes nothing.
Craft Note
Edward Zwick directed. Kevin Jarre wrote, drawing on Shaw’s letters and Lincoln Kirstein’s Lay This Laurel and Peter Burchard’s One Gallant Rush. Matthew Broderick as Shaw. Denzel Washington as Trip (Oscar, Supporting Actor). Morgan Freeman as Rawlins. Cary Elwes as Forbes. Andre Braugher (film debut) as Thomas. Jihmi Kennedy as Sharts. Freddie Francis won the Cinematography Oscar. James Horner scored. Sound Mixing Oscar. Released December 1989. Approximately eighteen million dollar budget. Twenty-seven million domestic gross. Three Oscars from five nominations.
Is Glory as good as people say?
10/10. The American Civil War film. It has a patient structure, great performances and an ending honest enough to hurt.
The whipping scene, the campfire and the assault each land on their own, and together they make a film where I can’t find a weak spot, so the 10 was never in doubt. Watch it.
