R-Va. Well wouldn't you know that those racist Republicans would appear in a movie like this. Thankfully, you'd never see a Democratic Senator in a movie of this sort! </sarcasm>
"The Institute will be heard from today." ~Lt. Gen. Thomas Jonathan Jackson, May 2, 1863~
Battle of Chancellorsville
The critics will be laying for them, with the probable exception of Roger Ebert. I say this because the movie has several things about it that PC Hollywood won't like:
1. Robert Duvall is open about having a religious life, and he went so far as to explore those themes in The Apostle, which made Hollywoden's toes curl with discomfort. He has been getting a pretty cool reception since then from people who were wild about him when he was portraying the drinking, whoring, swearing Augustus McCrae in TV's Lonesome Dove, or the cynical Max Mercy in The Natural.
2. This animus will be redoubled by the realistic portrayal of Thomas Jackson, who was even more religiously zealous, and militarily zealous, than this article conveys. The real Jackson was everything PC people love to hate: he was P-non-C and absolutely sure of himself and his relationship to God.
3. The environment for introducing a movie about the Civil War is harsher than when Gettysburg came out, because of the continuing cultural attack of The New York Times and the NAACP against any reference to the antebellum South, or its people, that is not pejorative. I predict flatly that the film will be criticized for "moral obtuseness" or some such, for failing to discern the inner Rottenness and Utter Blackness of Confederate officers and men and failing to portray them as hate-puppet caricatures with Simon Legree hatchet-faces, snaggle teeth, nasty fingernails, and greasy, stringy hair.