Posted on 07/03/2026 7:19:05 PM PDT by rlmorel
Went with my brother and a friend today to see "Young Washington" which was released today.
I have been looking forward to this movie for some time, and wondered if any other Freepers saw it, and if you liked it.
Me? I thought it was great. I am reasonably well read on Washington, and I think he is one of the greatest men who have ever lived.
To me, 95% of Americans who know anything about George Washington only know about his activities in the years directly before and after 1775, and this movie ended about ten years before that. I thought it was brilliant to show this part of his life, when he was a young man with ambition.
Any thoughts from my fellow conservatives?
glad to know. hopefully will see it tomorrow.
That is why one need to understand a little of the French and Indian war before viewing. Very few Americans have a clue about that time period and how it transitioned our relationship with England
Salutary neglect to more fiscal and legal oversight of the colonies
“”””It ended in 1755 I believe””””
That was the year that Washington first ran for political office.
5/5 for me today, historically accurate, no woke nonsense, no cussing, perfect for your children to learn about Washington’s early life. We liked it a lot.
>>>But the movie wasn’t made to show George Washington as he was in 1775. It was made to show him in 1755
Something they didn’t really emphasize in the previews or promotions.
Also, they failed to dig very deep at all into why God protected him so. It wasn’t his “destiny” as much as it was his faith. Of all the books he was portrayed to have read in this film, I don’t think the bible was mentioned once.
Yes! Wasn’t it great?
Sad that we have to do that these day, have our own grading system for things like cussing, DEI and such, never mind the historical manipulations of the truth that Leftist Hollywood always chooses to implement.
When I detect Leftist historical revisionism, even a sniff of it, I tend to shut the movie, documentary, or book down.
That was what so irritated me about the Ken Burns “The American Revolution” series. I didn’t know he was a Leftist when he made the Civil War series, but the stench of his Leftism grew stronger and stronger in each successive work he put out, and when I heard him say making it “...forced him to revisit everything he thought he knew about the American Revolution...” I suspected that I knew exactly where he was going with that, and it was confirmed when it was released and people saw it.
The story of the USS Indianapolis (sunk at the end of WWII after she delivered the A-Bomb to Tinan, and made famous to many modern day Americans by “Quint” in the the hit movie “Jaws” where he discusses the shark attacks) is one of particular interest to me, having been able to spend a few hours talking with one of the survivors back in the Nineties when he was one of my patients.
When the movie “Men of Courage” (with Nicholas Cage playing Captain McVay) came out, I was excited to see it. When I did, I could only watch the first 15 minutes or so before shutting it off. They made it all about the racial conflict between black and white sailors, instead of the incredible story of survival that it was. It totally disgusted me.
What I appreciated with “Young Washington” is that that they did have specific references to slaves in it (as well as black men serving with the troops) and instead of making the movie all about that (which is invariably when Leftists like Ken Burns do when they get their hands on it) they framed the racial element in a historically accurate way.
“Young Washington” did it the right way, and I am grateful for that.
I agree that the time frame was not well defined to prospective viewers.
Washington was undoubtedly a religious man as he demonstrated with his encouragement of his troops to pray and his mentions of scripture, so he no doubt knew the Bible as well or better than most people of his time.
But in the time frame portrayed with him as a child to a young man, they wanted to show not the aspect that he was or wasn’t religious, they wanted to show his ambition to improve his station in life and become a man of substance and importance, as when Lord Fairfax lent him tomes from his library such as “Cato”, books on surveying, and those types of things.
When you were disappointed that they didn’t spend enough time on his faith, I get that. When I watched the movie “Unbroken” about Louie Zamperini as a B-24 crewmember in WWII captured by the Japanese, I thought it was going to be one of the best movies I had ever seen on this subject, and...at the end, they mentioned almost nothing about his faith.
And that was the most amazing part of his story.
That this man, so terribly abused and tortured by the Japanese, and suffering from severe PTSD so severely that at one point, he woke up from a terrible nightmare (about the Japanese officer that had mistreated him cruelly) to find himself straddling in bed and strangling his pregnant wife. His story about being saved by Christ (his wife, in desperation to save him, dragged him nearly against his will to one of the early Billy Graham tent revival meetings, and it changed him. Zamperini became a minister, and went back to Japan to find his captors and genuinely forgive them.
That just blew me away. Blew me away. And they cut that entire aspect, the best and most impactful part of the story, out of the movie (that was directed by Angelina Jolie)
So, like you, I would have appreciated seeing more. But that wasn’t the focus...and I can live with that...:)
Interesting, I didn’t make that correlation. Thanks for that information, ansel12, and a Happy 4th to you, FRiend...
Enjoy-come back and post on what you think! Happy 4th to you!
The fact that Washington survived that battle with NO WOUNDS and the bullets shot at him went through his clothes making only holes, the fact that other bullets killed his horse but not him is nothing short of a miracle!
The movie did depict George Washington fighting the Battle of the Monongahela (also known as the Battle of the Wilderness) on July 9, 1755, with four bullet holes through his coat and two horses shot out from under him, yet he remained completely unhurt. Those shots were aimed AT HIM!
It was Diving Providence protecting him and preparing him to lead the nation that eventually became the USA! 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Yeah okay well, why in the heck did he cut down the cherry tree?
Hahaha...to paraphrase a small town police chief:
“If it weren’t for 14 year old boys, we wouldn’t have anything to do.”
LINK: The "Indian Prophecy" and the "Bulletproof President"
George Washington was known to the Seven Nations as "Conotocaurius," which was given to him by the Iroquois and translates to "Town Destroyer" or "Devourer of Villages." This nickname was given to him by the Seneca leader Tanacharison in 1753. (They called Washington's Great Grandfather by the same name and simply transferred it to him.)
This passage below was in a letter from George Washington to his brother that was published in an English newspaper before the American Revolution, and read by King George III where the young Colonel Washington said:
“I fortunately escaped without a wound, tho’ the right Wing where I stood was exposed to & received all the Enemy’s fire and was the part where the man was killed & the rest wounded. I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”
King George III, after reading this was said to have commented:
“He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.”
I do wish, however there was more emphasis on fur trading in the Ohio Valley. That was probably at least as important a motive as land takeover. And only one mention of the Brits buying rights to the land instead of by force (you have to know ahead of time about the deal with the Iroquois).
But given that no historical movie meets all of my fact validation routine’s demands, I give the movie an A. lol
It was remarkably close to his biography. He signed a letter that his French interpreter missed that accused Washington of assassinating the French officer & if the British had given him an officer’s commission, he probably would have led British troops against the Americans during the revolution. His hat & coat having bullet holes was true but the meeting with the Indian chief came across as sketchy at best.
The account of that meeting is, I think, an apocryphal one from a doctor who was there. Probably just part of his extensive legend…:)
I looked it up and while it happened, it happened years after the battle. The chief told his warriors that this man was from the Great Creator and to leave him alone.
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