Gettysburg: Three Days of Destiny

An epic event told by rank armatures

As a Civil War buff I received this DVD as a gift. It is almost better to use it as a coaster. Though the film accurately tells the story of the battle, and includes some of the more interesting anecdotes, most of the acting is so very poor that it is barely watchable. The few who do a worthy job are not even credited for their performance, and most who are should wish to have their names removed from the listing. Many have criticized the Ron Maxwell film "Gettysburg" (1993) for bad acting on the part of many supporting players, but they should win rave reviews when compared to nearly everyone in this work. The only redeeming feature are some of the visuals. However, so much of the casting is also horribly annoying -- a portly R.E.Lee indeed -- that one can't even watch with the sound off just to see the worthy reenactment scenes. As much as I would like to say the film has usefulness as a historical documentary, it is just to painful to watch to serve in even that capacity.

This movie isn't even worth taking the time to write a bad review. The only positive thing about it is that after watching a movie like this, we can appreciate how good other films we sometime call average actually are...

This motion picture has managed to make one of the single most interesting and epic battles in the history of mankind into a dull and boring event. It sucks even as a documentary, because i don't think even a History professor would manage to understand what is going on, let alone someone who should learn something about the battle by watching the film and begin to understand how it all actually happened... The 'acting' if I can dare call it that, is a story of it's own. Let it suffice to say that it should be utilized in acting schools in order to let students see how ridiculous bad acting can actually look on screen. I don't even want to mention the battle scenes or the camera, or the direction, or anything else for that matter for it would just be a further waste of time.

I told all of my friends to watch for the release. Luckily, it took a long time and some of them forgot. After I saw the film I didn't remind anyone.

First of all, it's not my fault. I had no speaking parts and just one close-up when we carried General Reynolds from the field. In one day, we filmed that and some scenes from the first day of battle. None of them were combat scenes. Mostly it was just bits of Reynolds, in a column of Cavalry, riding up to Gen. Buford at the Seminary. I can see why films cost millions. We worked more than six hours that day for maybe 30 seconds in the finished movie.

I rated this film to reflect how I felt as I watched such a pitiful portrayal of those that history has made larger than life. Like an unwanted song that I can't get out of my mind, I recall one endless scene where Jefferson Davis and a room full of southern notables, including Lee, are standing around like statues. The voice-over, I swear, was an adult trying to imitate a 3rd grader reading history to the class. Prominent southern men and women, coldly delivered muted lines (so we wouldn't miss any of that voice-over). 147 years ago these angry words invoked fury, violence, and war against the North. Except for some slight and ambiguous body language, the only thing moving about this scene was their lips. I don't have sufficient courage to watch this thing through a second time. If it wasn't for the miracle of fast forward, it would never be played again. My wife took video of the the filming so we have something to look at. The movie Gettysburg from the book The Killer Angels is the one to watch.

Okay, I said horrible things so I must confess this. When you walk around a video store and find a movie on the shelf that you are in, it's a pretty cool feeling. I have to smile, but I walk on by.

A bunch of amateurs ran around with camcorders as hundreds of weekend warriors (possibly after a beer-fest) put on uniforms and tried to play act. The audio is so poor it should have subtitles. Many scenes include soldiers standing around waiting for direction while white plumes of smoke appear here and there. The cameramen can't seem to hold a shot or let go of the cheap power zoom.

Quick summary of Scene 7: A group of Union soldiers are running. The General waving his sword in the air gets shot and falls. Two men drop their guns, come to his aid and try to help him run again. One gets shot. The General taps the shoulder of the other heavy guy (wearing light blue SWEAT pants) like he wants to be released. The heavy guy lets him go, forgets his gun, runs a few more steps then walks like the scene is over. In the mean time the General gets shot again and throws his arms back exactly like the first time. No shot effects... just acting. The General sweating on the ground looks like a binge drinker with heat stroke. The Union soldiers have all gone back the way they came. From this same direction a group of Confederate soldiers arrive.

They shouldn't tout this like it's a big budget epic drama. This looks like a no budget unplanned weekend shoot. Documentaries do a much better job with still photos.

Dull and poorly-paced, this dramatization, while massive in its scope, utilizing thousands of civil war reenactors, fails to give the viewer any real information about the battle's range and significance. Relying upon spoken excerpts from memoirs of those who were there, the film is visually and audibly authentic, but the viewer is never really given a sense of how the different segments of the battle fit together. A visual map at the beginning shows how the troops arrived at Gettysburg, but this is never repeated – more of these showing how the battle developed, and narration to tie together the various vignettes and add some clarity to the film would be helped immensely. Baritone musical interlude "A-tenting we will go" stops the film in its tracks, although the synth musical score by Nicholas Palmer is rather effective. This is like glimpsing the battle through binoculars but having no clue how the different scenes really work together.