"Glory" tells the story of the 54th Regiment largely through the eyes of Shaw (Matthew Broderick),
Explanation:
"Glory" tells the story of the 54th Regiment largely through the eyes of Shaw (Matthew Broderick), who in an early scene in the film is seen horrified and disoriented by the violence of the battlefield.
Returned home to recover from wounds, he is recruited to lead a newly formed black regiment and takes the job even though his own enlightened abolitionist opinions still leave room for doubts about the capability of black troops.
It is up to the troops themselves to convince him they can fight - and along the way they also gently provide him with some insights into race and into human nature, a century before the flowering of the civil rights movement. Among the men who turn into the natural leaders of the 54th are Trip (Denzel Washington), an escaped slave, and John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman), first seen in the film as a gravedigger who encounters the wounded Shaw on the field of battle.
These men are proud to be soldiers, proud to wear the uniform and also too proud to accept the racism they see all around them, as when a decision is made to pay black troops less than white. Blacks march as far, bleed as much and die as soon, they argue. Why should they be paid less for the same work? Shaw and his second in command, Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), eventually see the logic in this argument and join their men in refusing their paychecks. That action is a turning point for the 54th, fusing the officers and men together into a unit with mutual trust. But there are countless smaller scenes that do the same thing, including one in which Shaw is pointedly told by one of his men that when the war is over, nothing much will have changed: "You'll go back to your big house." "Glory" has been directed by Edward Zwick, designed by Norman Garwood and photographed by Freddie Francis with enormous attention to period detail, as in such small touches as the shoes issued to the troops (they don't come in right and left, but get to be that way after you've worn them long enough). These little details lead up to larger ones, as when the children of poor black sharecroppers look on in wonder as black soldiers, in uniform, march past their homes. And everything in the film leads up to the final bloody battle scene, a suicidal march up a hill that accomplishes little in concrete military terms but is of incalculable symbolic importance.
