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A stirring Civil War drama with real emotional force, strong performances, and memorable battle staging. It does lean into uplift and sentiment, and its perspective is shaped by a late-80s mainstream approach, but the film’s sincerity, scale, and central performances make it enduringly effective.
73% (238,317)
Where to watch: fuboTV
1989 · 2h 2m · ★ 73% (238.3K)
Their innocence. Their heritage. Their lives.
Director: Edward Zwick
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes
Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War's first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.
Edward Zwick
Freddie Fields Productions, TriStar Pictures
Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman, Jihmi Kennedy, Andre Braugher, John Finn, Donovan Leitch, JD Cullum, Bob Gunton, Cliff DeYoung, Christian Baskous, RonReaco Lee, Jay O. Sanders, Alan North, Richard Riehle, Peter Michael Goetz, Mark Margolis, Jane Alexander, Paul Desmond
fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo
A stirring Civil War drama with real emotional force, strong performances, and memorable battle staging. It does lean into uplift and sentiment, and its perspective is shaped by a late-80s mainstream approach, but the film’s sincerity, scale, and central performances make it enduringly effective.
Glory is one of those prestige war dramas that knows exactly how to make an audience feel the weight of history. It builds its emotional power through discipline, camaraderie, and the gradual hardening of men who are asked to fight for a country that barely recognizes them. The performances are a major reason it works: the film gives the 54th Massachusetts real presence, and the battlefield scenes have a scale and clarity that still land hard.
What keeps Glory from feeling like a museum piece is the tension between its rousing form and its harsher subject. It is undeniably sentimental, and its point of view is shaped by the conventions of late-80s Hollywood, but that doesn’t erase the conviction behind it. The movie wants to honor sacrifice without pretending sacrifice was clean or simple.
Seen now, it can feel both moving and somewhat of its era. Even so, it remains a powerful entry in the Civil War canon: emotionally direct, technically assured, and anchored by performances that give the story weight beyond its familiar inspirational framework.
Will Menaker (4★) · 955 likes
Not going to lie, I don't think any movie makes me tear up as much this one. It wrings it out of me with it's big, cornball sentimentality and sweeping, swelling music, but I'll be damned if it isn't appropriate and I won't hear any slander of this movie from the baby-brained that it's some kind of simple "white savior" narrative. I watched this after 'The Battle of Algiers' because I'm interested in the idea that this movie is not… more
matt lynch (4★) · 599 likes
This is a fascinating work that of course probably couldn't live up to contemporary representational semiotics but for 1989 it's incredibly complicated and thorny without sacrificing simple melodrama. It's also packed with truly elaborate spectacle and tremendous performances. Good movie, quite Ford-ian in its way.
Sally Jane Black · 465 likes
Even Roger Ebert knew this was racist, apparently. There's arguments that anti-white supremacist arguments should pander to white sensibilities, that white people listen better when we have it sugarcoated for us. Maybe this is true. Maybe I've only ever learned when being coddled, but it has never felt that way. Every epiphany I've had about my own privilege or about racism has felt painful. This film is not painful to watch. This film is not excoriating of whiteness. This film
Matt! (4★) · 371 likes
My favorite thing about movies that depict this era of warfare? Guys giving inspirational speeches to seas of hundreds and hundreds of men which in real life occurred next to battlefields filled with cannon fire and thus would’ve ended up sounding more like the adults from the Peanuts cartoons. A super sappy drama and one of the biggest ever culprits of overly sentimental music manipulation also happens to be one of the most powerful war films of the last
CinemaVoid 🏴☠️ (3.5★) · 302 likes
What’s so civil about war anyway?
Another large-scale Civil War drama that pairs battlefield spectacle with a reverent, old-school historical approach.
For viewers drawn to American history, moral conflict, and a prestige-drama style that treats politics as character study.
Shares the underdog-team dynamic and inspirational sweep, with race and institutional resistance at the center.
A smart military drama about race, authority, and investigation within a segregated Black unit.
Another uplifting historical story about Black service members confronting prejudice while proving their excellence.
A classic courtroom-western hybrid that examines race, military honor, and prejudice in an older Hollywood mode.
A compact, psychologically focused Civil War film that complements Glory’s battlefield themes with a more internal perspective.
A Civil War-era drama that emphasizes muddy loyalties, regional conflict, and the human cost of the war.
For a more intimate Civil War story that mixes romance, survival, and the devastation of the conflict.
A modern combat film with strong ensemble dynamics, battlefield tension, and a somber view of sacrifice.
If the appeal is disciplined military storytelling and immersive combat chaos, this is a strong match.
A benchmark for visceral war filmmaking and emotional sacrifice, with a similarly serious patriotic register.
Civil War, Black military history, racial injustice, camaraderie, sacrifice, patriotism, leadership, institutional prejudice
Civil War, war drama, historical epic, ensemble cast, battle scenes, sentimental, racial injustice, period piece, patriotic, prestige cinema