Gettysburg ★★★½ 1993 (PG)

Civil War buff Ted Turner (who has a cameo as a Confederate soldier) originally intended Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Killer Angels” to be adapted as a threepart miniseries for his “TNT” network, but the lure of the big screen prevailed, marking the first time the battle has been committed to film and the first time a film crew has been allowed to film battle scenes on the Gettysburg National Military Park battlefield. The greatest battle of the war and the bloodiest in U.S. history is realistically staged by more than 5,000 Civil War reenactors. The all-male cast concentrates on presenting the human cost of the war, with Daniels particularly noteworthy as the scholarly Colonel Chamberlain, determined to hold Little Round Top for the Union. Last film role for Jordan, to whom the movie is codedicated. The full scale re-creation of Pickett's Charge is believed to be the largest period scale motionpicture sequence filmed in North America since D.W. Griffith's “Birth of a Nation.” 254m/C VHS, DVD . Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen, Tom Berenger, Sam Elliott, Richard Jordan, Stephen Lang, Kevin Conway, C. Thomas Howell, Maxwell Caulfield, Andrew Prine, James Lancaster, Royce D. Applegate, Brian Mallon, Cooper Huckabee, Bo Brinkman, Kieran Mulroney, Patrick Gorman, William Morgan Sheppard, James Patrick Stuart, Tim Ruddy, Joseph Fuqua, Ivan Kane, Warren Burton, MacIntyre Dixon, George Lazenby, Alex Harvey, John Diehl, John Rothman, Richard Anderson, Billy Campbell, David Carpenter, Donal Logue, Dwier Brown, Mark Moses, Ken Burns, Ted Turner; D: Ronald F. Maxwell; W: Ronald F. Maxwell; C: Kees Van Oostrum; M: Randy Edelman.

Gettysburg a town in Pennsylvania, near which the Battle of Gettysburg, a decisive battle of the American Civil War, was fought in July 1863. A Union army under General Meade repulsed the Confederate army of General Lee and forced him to abandon his invasion of the north.
Gettysburg address a speech delivered on 19 November 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the national cemetery on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, opening with the words, ‘Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’