Saw this this past weekend. I was pretty disappointed. As it was supposed to be a prequel to Gettysburg and done by the same director or producer (can't remember which), i was hoping it would've been stylistically similar to it in many ways. The only thing similar to Gettysburg where a couple of the actors returned (C Thomas Howell and Jeff Daniels mainly). Way too many longwinded orations and the movie dragged too much. Too much character development and not enough action. I was kinda bummed that the film seemed to be more of a biopic about Chamberlain and Jackson than it did about the battles and story of the war itself. They were both great men and great soldiers, but they were but a couple out of many great characters from the war. I guess i shouldn't have too high of hopes though when it comes to portraying the Civil War. To truly tell the whole story in a movie format would be near impossible. Just too many substories going on with too many people and places. A couple of things i did like about the movie: a majority of the battles depicted in the movie took place in places i was very familiar with and with battles that i was very familiar with. I went to school in Fredericksburg and spent a great deal of time getting to know the battles that took place around the town (Wilderness, Marye's Heights, etc.) so it was pretty cool to see these areas i knew depicted so well. Though you could tell that the town the scenes were shot in were not really Fredericksburg. At anyrate, for any Civil War history buff, this movie is definitely worth seeing. But for someone with little or no interest in the War, it'd be a colossal waste of time. At four hours long, i was ready for the movie to end long before it actually did.

T-