The struggle that forged America and launched modern warfare comes to life in a major new film. By Bill Kauffman Mr. Lincoln said he liked his speeches short and sweet, so here it is: The new Warner Brothers picture Gods and Generals is not only the finest movie ever made about the Civil War, it is also the best American historical film. Period. Writer-director Ron Maxwell’s prequel to his epic Gettysburg (1993) is so free of cant, of false notes, of the politically conformist genuflections that we expect in our historical movies, that one watches it as if in a...