Analysis Of The Movie Glory

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Being a United States History major, the choice for this movie review was simply a no brainer. For this paper I have chosen to review the Civil War based movie named Glory. The movie was released in 1989, just after the centennial of the Civil War ending. Glory was innovative, due to the fact that not many movies portrayed how the blacks were important to the North winning the war against the South. The movie had an all-star cast that consisted of Matthew Broderick as Col. Robert Shaw, Denzel Washington as Pvt Trip, and Morgan Freeman as Sgt Major John Rawlins (IMDB.com). Before critically reviewing this wonderful movie, I only watched the movie for the significance of it being about our nation’s history and war. As I critically watched …show more content…

We see how black soldiers were unfairly provided the necessities by the government compared to their white counterparts. Uniforms, pay, and living conditions were nowhere near to what was being provided to other units that comprised of whites. Another factor was that the 54th Regiment was poorly being used in the battlefield and not provided the opportunity to face the South until Col Shaw stepped up and demanded that his unit be allowed to go to battle. I think that the weakest issue that was not covered was covered had to be the mistreatment from the trainers and society that looked down upon the 54th Regiment as a whole. Their training was much tougher than that of white units due to the fact that blacks were still looked down as a lower class of society, but this was not just from their brothers in arms, also white civilians. I think we see this hardship when a skirmish almost breaks out between the 54th and an all-white unit. One of the gentlemen from the all-white unit realizes Morgan Freeman’s character, Sgt Major John Rawlins, has been given strips and profoundly disrespect him even though the white soldier is very much lower in …show more content…

We see the unfairness that was demonstrated to blacks whether it was on the battlefield or the sports field. There are all these hardships that black soldiers and athletes have to endure before others are able to see what exactly the capabilities of the black characters being portrayed. I believe that these actions are due to the blindness that society had for blacks and thought of them as a lower class in society. Today, many former soldiers like retired General Colin Powell and athletes like Michael Jordan are very much looked up to as being a higher class. I think in the next 10 to 20 years we will see documentaries made about these two gentlemen and we will still see some hardship that they endured due to the color of their skin. The unfortunate part is that society as a whole thinks still to this day that those of different color still belong into a particular class whether higher or

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