Gods and GeneralsMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 30 out of 100 Generally unfavorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
12 Iffy for 12+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 60
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    One doesn't come away from it with any sense of what the victory cost in human terms. Read full review

  • 40
    Los Angeles Times | Kevin Thomas

    Maxwell has populated his film with paragons rather than people. Worse, they talk and talk and talk; this film is in danger of talking itself to death before the Union and the Confederacy are able to decimate each other. Read full review

  • 40
    Variety | Robert Koehler

    Gods and Generals is American history transformed into a museum movie, consistently making the flawed human characters at the heart of the Civil War into flawless figures Olympian in their statuesque remoteness. Read full review

  • 38
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    The kind of movie beloved by people who never go to the movies, because they are primarily interested in something else--the Civil War, for example--and think historical accuracy is a virtue instead of an attribute. Read full review

  • 38
    USA Today | Mike Clark

    You don't envy the three soldiers who get shot for desertion, but you do identify with their desire to flee. Read full review

  • 33
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    Bloodless and false. Read full review

  • 30
    Washington Post | Michael O'Sullivan

    Less a movie than a meticulously, tediously accurate Civil War reenactment committed to celluloid. Read full review

  • 30
    The New York Times | Stephen Holden

    A lumpy three-and-a-half-hour glob of Civil War history. Read full review

  • 25
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    It's a plodding, episodic film, reverent and sanctimonious, and its pro-Southern viewpoint -- a time-honored Hollywood tendency -- makes "Gone With the Wind" look like a Northern polemic. Read full review

  • 25
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    What the filmmakers fail to recognize is that history on the page is quite different from what it needs to be onscreen, namely alive and visceral. Read full review


Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 12+ Meticulous Civil War story runs a little long.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this movie has sustained battle violence and bloody scenes of caring for wounded soldiers. Many characters die.
  • Families can talk about the way that more than 160 years later, people in the United States still disagree about the causes and effects of the Civil War (which some still call the War Between the States). What did the soldiers on both sides have in common? What were their differences? Given what is going on in the world right now, what did we learn?
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: Intense battle violence, bloody surgical scenes
  • sex false0 Sex: None
  • language false0 Language: None
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Smoking, social drinking

Gods and Generals Movie Ratings + Reviews

Fans say

Must Go! 5 fan reviews

Critics say

No See all critic reviews

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