[LS]

I thought just the opposite. I found the second half boring.

Look, Maxwell rolled the dice and lost on this: he gambled that he could make a "Gone With The Wind" without any real romance (I'm sorry, but the Jackson/wife story and Mira Sorvino/Jeff Daniels don't cut it).

Moreover, while I'm a history freak and liked it, it is not something I would watch several times like Gettysburg because it is, well, "bloated," to quote one of the reviewers.

It was either arrogance or stupidity on Maxwell's part to think that he could refrain from EDITING. Even Thomas Jefferson needed editors for the Dec. of Independence. I hope in "Last Full Measure" he finds an excellent editor, and makes the movie that the third part of this trilogy deserves.

[RobbyS]

Cutting, it needed. The film should have focused on Jackson, which would have meant that the Valley campaign, the Peninsula campaign, and 2nd Bull Run, and Antietam would hsve had to be worked in, requiring much more compression. Also his relations with other commanders. And how does one make a film about the war in Virginia while ignoring Jefferson Davis and Johnston?

[Sans-Culotte]

It was either arrogance or stupidity on Maxwell's part to think that he could refrain from EDITING

That is the big problem with the movie. I thought Gettysburg needed tighter editing, too. Maxwell lingers over too much. Like the scene in Gettysburg where Lee rides amongst the men to great acclaim. It is a powerful moment, but Maxwell doesn't understand the law of diminishing returns. He holds the scene about twice as long as he needs to. In the Pickett's Charge sequence, the preparation takes as long as the charge, and then the charge itself takes forever. He seems to think he has to film all the seqquences in real time. As a result, several scenes were cut from Gettysburg that were needed to advance the story (Lee's scene with Ewell, for example).

In G & G, his tendency to let things go on too long, and to include unnecesary scenes, were very damaging to the film. For instance, we didn't need to see Stonewall's farewell to the Stonewall Brigade. Also, the book on which the film was based (which is way better than the movie), concentrated equally on Lee, Jackson, Chamberlain and Hancock, but it appears that Maxwell decided to concentrate almost entirely on Jackson. The film may as well have been called Mighty Stonewall, to borrow the title of a well-known Jackson biography. Stephen Lang was fabulous as Jackson, but I wish they had included more of Jackson's peculiarities and eccentricities.

Overall, I'd give the movie 2-1/2 to 3 stars, because I'm a history buff, and the recreation of the battle of Fredericksburg alone made it worthwile for me. I will get the DVD. The move is no Citizen Kane, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.. The movie does have some powerful moments. I guess this is a film in which the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

BTW, I do think some of the reviews did overstress the PC viewpoint, particularly Ebert's.

[envision]

"It was either arrogance or stupidity on Maxwell's part to think that he could refrain from EDITING. Even Thomas Jefferson needed editors for the Dec. of Independence. I hope in "Last Full Measure" he finds an excellent editor, and makes the movie that the third part of this trilogy deserves."

I have read that the "director's cut" of this film is six hours long. I look forward to seeing it some day.

I recall a book "When the Shooting Stops ... The Editing Begins", came out in the 70's. Written by a film editor. He related a story about a famous film reviewer savaging a film, making all kinds of disparaging remarks about the editing. The reviewer had absolutely no clue what he was talking about.

[Valin]

In Gettysburg he was covering three days, in Gods and Generals he's trying to cover three years.
It's my opinion that unless you are a history nut you will feel every minute of this movie. I await the dvd in the hope that they spend more time on the period before the war and that little skirmish in Md.