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Old 02-01-2018, 09:03 AM   #9327
Seanny One Ball
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Gods and Generals: 0/4 Stars

I watched the world's worst retelling of the American Civil War last night and by the looks of it there was a bit of cash behind it too. Robert Duvall and Stephen Lang should be thoroughly ashamed of this time in their lives...when a paycheck meant more to them than the abominable material with which they were working.
Politically speaking this film was fucking mental. Every black character in it (I think there were three) gets trotted out in some gross display of friendship and assistance to the noble confederate cause and in one particularly egregious instance they have Frankie Faison add an "s" to the end of his words to show how provincially charming(ignorant) and contented(grateful under white authority) he is. I think the message is supposed to be that if you are in the south long enough a kindly black slave will come and recite passages from the bible to you in thanks for the rewards the South has provided him.
It's all pretty gross.
Aside from the so-obvious-it's-just-fucking-nuts history rewrites we also get long periods of running. I mean lots of it. Running or marching on great big fields for extended periods of time. sure there's smoke and the odd crack and flash of suspiciously shoddy CGI gunfire but it's mostly just long shots of people marching followed by slightly closer shots of people marching. Then perhaps a bit of running and finally lots of lying down or standing up as two opposing armies stand 50 yards apart and blast hell out of each other for however long it takes until the quota of melodramatic camp has been squawked away by their badly written minor characters.
There's a fucking amazing bit where the union Irish and the confederate Irish just cry at each other as they get blasted to bits.

"They've been misled to their fates" says one of them.

I nearly pissed myself.

Other highlights include Jeff Daniels clearly being swayed into this awful tripe with the promise of a heroic supporting role and his constant running forward, light aluminium cavalry sabre in hand as he intermittently screams "double time lads!" and slows down to scream it some more with his back to the war.
Stephen Lang plays the infamous Stonewall Jackson with all the aplomb of a constipation turd hitting the toilet bowl, I'm not sure why he's even in it at all. He just runs about saying religious things and being the recipient of a humble slave's benevolence.
He also gets shot in the hand first thing in the war like a complete dickhead for waving his arms around to signal kick off.

It's not a football match Stonewall.

I have decided to use Roger Ebert's 4 star rating's system from now on. I think it's easier to show approval/disapproval this way. I was too sparing in my below 5/10 reviews.
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