Glory (1989)

Robert Gould Shaw (Matthew Broderick) is a captain in the US Army at the Battle of Antietam.  While leading his men toward the Confederate lines, he is wounded and left on the battlefield when the Union forces retreat.  He awakens to see John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman), who is digging graves for the dead.  While being treated for his injury, he learns that Lincoln is preparing the Emancipation Proclamation.  Back in Boston to recover, Shaw is offered command of the proposed all-black regiment by Governor John Andrew (Alan North).  Shaw accepts and a regiment is recruited.  Among the recruits are John Rawlins, Thomas Searles (Andre Braugher), Jupiter Sharts (Jihmi Kennedy), and Silas Trip (Denzel Washington).

The 54th has many obstacles to overcome before it can be sent to fight.  First, they must learn to march and shoot.  Then there is the trouble in getting uniforms and other gear.  The constant concern is that black soldiers will be left to do manual labor rather than actual fighting.  Eventually, the regiment heads south and is assigned to foraging duty with an undisciplined all-black regiment under Colonel Montgomery (Cliff De Young).  Determined to be sent into battle, Shaw uses his family contacts to make it so.  The 54th fights its first engagement at Grimball's Landing.  For the finale, Shaw volunteers for the Forlorn Hope against Fort Wagner which is protecting Charleston Harbor.

Denzel Washington won his first Oscar for this role and it is clear why.  He brings Silas Trip to life, a former slave who both wants to fight yet doesn't hold much regard for whites, even those who have been dying to free those like him.  He is all callouses and scar tissue, a man who basks in the disdain of his fellows.  However, the growing comradery with his tent mates and the recognition he receives for his bravery in battle transform him.  The prickly loner has become a valued member of the regiment.  He is now a man at peace with himself as he faces a grim battle ahead.

By contrast, Matthew Broderick is a peculiar choice.  He does the youth part just fine, but there isn't much edge to him.  Even when he seeks to be forceful, it comes across almost as pleading.  Often, it felt like he acted entirely out of duty rather than an inner fire for abolition.  He did not seem like a man who would volunteer for a suicidal charge into the guns of Fort Wagner.  Sure, if he was ordered to do it, he would, but he didn't strike me as a man to volunteer.  Though the lines were forceful, the delivery was wishy-washy.  Of course, maybe this is how Shaw was.  Broderick was Director Edward Zwick's first choice for the role.

Andre Braugher is quite good as Thomas Searles, an idealist who grew up free in Boston and finds the rigors of the army more difficult than expected.  As a friend of Colonel Shaw, he feels suddenly abandoned thanks to rules against fraternization.  Considering his later work in cop dramas, this role was out of character for him.  Then again, this was his first role!  An excellent performance and a well-realized character.

If the movie had been nothing but the banter and comradery amongst Freeman, Washington, Braugher, and Kennedy, it would have still been a great movie.  The chemistry among these characters is terrific.

Though the movie gets the history generally correct, there are issues.  First, the regiment was almost exclusively recruited from the free blacks living in Massachusetts, not escaped slaves.  Most of them should have been more like Andre Braugher's bookish Corporal Searles rather than Denzel Washington's belligerent Private Trip.  Many of the soldiers were recruited by Frederick Douglass.  In fact, two of his sons joined the 54th and one of them, Lewis Henry Douglass, was the sergeant major.  Therefore, John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) should have been replaced by Lewis Douglass.  Though Freeman is absolutely terrific in the role, it is peculiar that a fictional character was inserted rather than the historical one.  The only non-fictional member of the 54th is Colonel Shaw.

Overall, a good film that shows the 54th from the perspective of its first commanding colonel.  The 54th wasn't done after the 2nd Battle of Fort Wagner but that is where this story ends.

The Magnificent Seven

The story opens with a group of farmers convening in the town church to discuss what to do about Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard).  Bogue crashes the meeting with half a dozen armed goons and declares the irritating farmers to be standing in the way of capitalism and God, demonstrating that 1) he is an idiot and 2) that the movie wants to make a statement against the 'evils' of capitalism.  Bogue bullies the townsfolk to either sell their land at a loss or suffer the consequences.  He then murders an unarmed man who dared to speak against him and burned down the church.  See, this is what robber barons did in the Old West.

 

Chisolm (Denzel Washington) is basically a bounty hunter who is hired by Emma (Haley Bennett), the wife of the man murdered by Bogue.  Chilsolm immediately recruits Faraday (Chris Pratt), a gambler.  More are recruited on the way.  There is Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) the sharpshooter, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee) the Knife Thrower, Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio) the Mountain Man, Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) the Mexican, and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) the Comanche.  Of course, it must be remembered that Emma and Teddy (Luke Grimes) are with them from start to finish, taking part in most of the fights; Magnificent 9?  The seven arrive in town and, amazingly, Bogue has left better than a score of men to keep the townsfolk and the miners in line.  The seven make short work of the goons and then send the corrupt sheriff to tell Bogue that his reign has ended.

 

The seven plus two head out to the mines and rescue the miners from more of Bogue's goons.  Really?  It is like Bogue is a slave master, not a paragon of the free market.  Can we make this capitalist any more evil?  Yes, we can.  When the timid and whimpering sheriff arrives in Sacramento to inform Bogue that a band of men had killed his goons, Bogue shoots him.  Bogue goes on to lecture him while the man dies at his feet.  Yes, another cold blooded murder because that is what capitalists do, don't you know.  Bogue commands his chief goons to gather men so they can deal with these rebels.

 

Despite being hired guns, Bogue's men have no idea how to fight as a unit.  There are no tactics at all.  During their main charge, they ride into a pair of massive explosions but the survivors continue to charge.  Then gunmen pop up from hidden trenches and start blazing away at the exposed riders but the survivors continue to charge.  They charge into cul-de-sacs and then ride in circles while they are cut down by riflemen from above.  There is no effort to secure a building and then move on from there.  Killed by the dozen and yet not one decides to retreat and regroup.  That is not how mercenaries operate; you don't get paid if you are dead.  After losing the majority of his force, Bogue demonstrates just how evil a capitalist can be.  He orders his remaining men to blaze away at the town with his Gatling Gun.  Wait!  You had a Gatling Gun and decided to use it after you had lost scores of men in a reckless charge?  In what was meant to be a scene of bravery and sacrifice, one of the seven manages to take out the Gatling Gun and all the men around it.  Reduced to himself and two men, Bogue rides into town.  Seriously!  And then he is baffled when his two men are killed and he is alone.  Wow, how did this imbecile live this long?  Oh, and then he begs for his life.  Ugh.  He takes refuge in the remains of the church he had burned a few weeks before.  The clichés are plentiful, so plentiful as to be frustrating.

 

The movie would be better named Emma Cullen, the Magnificent Seven and the Town Militia.  Lots of townsfolk are involved in the battle, making the seven more like officers of the militia.  Considering the amount of time they had to prepare and the numbers for defending the position, the town should have done better with competent leadership.

 

Antoine Fuqua is a hypocrite.  Here is a man who has gotten rich off of capitalism making a film that is critical of capitalism.  Then again, it may be he is too stupid to understand what capitalism is.

 

Capitalism (noun): an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

 

The movie industry is a privately-owned for profit enterprise.  Does Fuqua propose that the state fund his movies with the notion of no profit?  Would he like to earn prevailing wage for his directing?  I can guarantee his income will plummet under such a system.  He, every actor on screen, the producers, and all the rest are engaged in capitalism.

 

This is the second Antoine Fuqua film with a 'historical' setting that I have seen and he needs to avoid them.  King Arthur (2004) was a travesty and this is equally bad.  He should stick with movies that take place in the present and avoid political messages that he is ill-equipped to explain.  One of the reasons the original movie was set in Mexico is that law and order was far less effective there.  In the United States, the townsfolk could have petitioned the governor to do something about Bogue the murderer and his hired goons.  There were territorial marshals, circuit judges, even the US Cavalry in a conflict of this size.

 

Two notable 'private' wars in the Old West would be the Lincoln County War (which saw Billy the Kid as a combatant) and the Johnson County War in Wyoming (badly depicted in the infamous box office bomb, Heaven's Gate).  Each conflict saw perhaps 2 dozen people killed.  This movie saw that many killed in the teaser gunfight!  The gunfight at the OK Corral only saw 3 killed!  Perhaps this movie takes place in West World, the new HBO series.

 

Best avoided.

Safe House

I recently saw the 2013 movie and was less than impressed.  The story opens with Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington) being pursued by unknown assailants in South Africa.  He manages to escape into the US Embassy.  It is here that we learn he is an infamous traitor who has sold US Intelligence secrets for a decade.  A team is sent to interrogate him but they first transfer him to a safe house that is maintained by Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds).  Weston questions the legality of the interrogation when Frost is water boarded.  The interrogation has hardly begun when the very assailants who chased Frost into the embassy attack the safe house.  The interrogation team is all killed and it is left to Weston to escape with Frost and find another safe house.  Of course, Frost is less than keen on resuming the interrogation at another site and escapes.  Disgraced and his career likely over, Weston ignores orders to stand down and starts tracking Frost.

 

The movie is entertaining as it goes along.  There are exciting action scenes, filled with instances where Weston and Frost become allies in the face of the unknown assailants and then enemies again.   It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there is a mole in the CIA who leaked the location of the safe house.  The movie offers several potential leakers though it is pretty obvious all along.  And that leads to the moral of this movie: American Intelligence is evil and Tobin Frost was a hero for his treason.  Yes, the traitor is the hero.  And Matt Weston follows in his footsteps to become the new Tobin Frost.

 

Why must we have movies where the United States is the bad guy?  Sure, I understood that Hollywood would have the US be bad guys during the Bush Administration; Hollywood is populated by Democrats.  However, we've had Obama for years and still America is portrayed as bad and corrupt.  The best thing that a patriot could do for the country is to commit treason.  It sometimes appears that Hollywood is the propaganda arm of a hostile foreign power.