Edward Zwick’s Glory is a moving, carefully made war film whose actors give more to the soldiers than the writing does. Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman make its familiar character types worth caring about.
Edward Zwick’s Glory wants to give the black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment the attention their courage deserves. It is a moving war film, and we recommend it with one substantial reservation: the soldiers do not get enough opportunity to tell their own story. Zwick trusts military discipline, solidarity and the force of battle to carry much of the drama. He also trusts Kevin Jarre’s dialogue rather too much. Some of it sounds written for a history lesson, even when the actors make us believe the people delivering it.
Matthew Broderick’s Colonel Robert Gould Shaw occupies too much of the film’s attention for our liking, but Broderick is not the problem. His performance gives the officer’s responsibilities a seriousness that helps the military story work. The difficulty is the decision to spend so much time understanding the regiment through its commander. In a film about black soldiers facing racism, we want more of their experience without an officer placed between them and us.
Denzel Washington, as Private Trip, supplies much of what is missing from that approach. There is an anger in the performance that makes the film’s respectable intentions feel insufficient, which is useful. Morgan Freeman’s Sergeant Major John Rawlins gives the men’s developing solidarity a convincing human presence. We were moved by the small scenes in which the soldiers begin to act together with conviction. Washington and Freeman make that loyalty feel earned, even when Jarre’s writing leaves the men too close to familiar types.
Freddie Francis’s cinematography is particularly good at keeping the period detail visible without softening the violence. The battle scenes are forceful enough to interrupt any comfortable admiration of the image, and that matters in a film so concerned with honour. Norman Garwood’s production design helps establish a convincing historical setting, giving the actors a persuasive place to inhabit. The physical care carries us through stretches where the dialogue settles for a general idea of how a soldier should speak.
Steven Rosenblum’s editing keeps the regiment’s growth important alongside the fighting. Those smaller scenes of conviction stop the film from becoming a succession of impressive military demonstrations. James Horner’s score provides the scale and solemnity Zwick is after, and we respond to it more often than we resist it. There are moments when its urging feels unnecessary, because the actors have already done the difficult work.
War films can make courage easy to applaud by leaving the institution asking for it largely unexamined. Glory makes racism within the soldiers’ own cause part of its account of military service. The solemn tone sometimes makes that conflict feel simpler than it should. Yet Zwick gives the men’s struggle to be recognised enough attention for it to remain troubling, even when the writing invites an easier response. Give it an uninterrupted evening; the smaller exchanges between the soldiers deserve as much attention as the fighting.
