Gods And Generals, the prequel to writer-director and American mythographer Ronald F. Maxwell's Gettysburg. Gods And Generals deals with the early days of the American Civil War and, for the uninitiated, it gives very little background to the conflict, surprising for a movie that runs for almost 4 hours. Robert Duvall plays General Robert E. Lee who is offered command of the U.S. forces by President Lincoln but turns the offer down and instead takes command of the forces of the South against the Union. The film's main character, though, is the ultra-religious General Stonewall Jackson, Stephen Lang, who proves not to be the most interesting of protagonists. The battle scenes are elaborately staged and spectacular, but they go on at enormous length and in between them there's a good deal of time-wasting sentimentality. The film certainly has scope and breadth, but it really holds limited interest to non-Americans or those of us not particularly enthralled by the politics of that country's Civil War.
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