The story of the first Black regiment to see combat in the Civil War The 54th Massachusetts was a real regiment, officered by Colonel Shaw (the only man in the movie based on a real person). All the troops were Black, but the commissioned officers were White. For a long time, they weren’t issued proper equipment or uniforms, and were only used for manual labor. But at Shaw’s insistence, they were finally put into combat in South Carolina in 1863. In an attack on a seaside fort, they suffered over 50% casualties, but their valor was so impressive that the War Department immediately began forming additional Black regiments.

The movie focuses on four of the troops, Trip, an escaped slave with anger against everybody and everything, Rawlins, who served as a laborer in the army prior to joining the 54th, and who understands the sacrifice the white soldiers are making for the Blacks, Sharts, an illiterate field worker, and Searles, an educated free Black from Boston who has a hard time fitting in with his fellow-soldiers.

The movie was good, but not great. I especially liked the characters played by Morgan Freeman and Andre Braugher. I thought Matthew Brodericks’ Colonel Shaw looked like a 13-year-old with a beard, and he spent was too much time staring confusedly into space. I imagine the director wanted me, the viewer, to be imagining what he was thinking. What I thought he was thinking was, “Why am I here and what am I supposed to do next?”