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1st watched 8/23/2003 - 5 out of 10(Dir-Ron Maxwell): Over-produced civil war movie with excellent portrayal of Stonewall Jackson by Stephen Lang. This movie was like a few movies in one. First, it was a majorly complex civil war battle recreation, next, it was portrayals of famous civil wars generals in a very broad way, and lastly a very specific interpretation of Stonewall Jackson of the Confederates. This movie seemed to lean a lot towards the South and portraying them as `real' people who cared about God's plans and weren't just slave traders, and the North as upper-echelon educated men portrayed mostly by Jeff Daniels' character. The weird thing about the movie is that it drifted back-and-forth between sides allowing us to see the `realness' of the characters but halfway thru the Jeff Daniels' character started becoming God-fearing as well. I think there was too much time taken it trying to portray both sides as the same with an unusually bad representation of Abraham Lincoln as a President who was trying to conquer the South rather than trying to keep the union together. I'm glad to have seen a different perspective but it seemed to be rather one-sided favoring the South. The battle scenes were probably the most realistic ever portrayed of the civil war and over-whelmingly long. The best scenes were those with Stephen Lang who deserved top-billing(which instead was given to Robert Duvall in a smaller role) and an Oscar-nomination for his well-rounded excellent portrayal of Thomas `Stonewall' Jackson as a religious man with an un-moveable focus on his fight for independence for the South. If the movie was only this, it would have been a much better movie. It was extremely bold for Ted Turner pictures to present this 4-hour long movie in the theatres but it probably would have been a better movie at 2 ½ hours. Bold choice that will hopefully pay-off in the video/dvd world since it probably didn't in the theatres.
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