> No way is this score worthy of five stars! I didn't like the way it was
> used in the film, and it's nowhere near as memorable or effective as the
> score for Gettysburg. I missed the way that Gettysburg sounded. That score
> was original and it effectively brought me back to the Civil War era. This
> score is a major disappointment. Nothing about it stands out...there's
> bombast and patriotism but it's all of a generic war movie quality. When I
> saw the film, it made key moments laughable because they just didn't
> warrant that much fuss. Some people might be impressed by the big
> orchestra, but give me the smaller, warmer, and more harrowing Gettysburg
> any day.

Although Gettysburg was appealing in its more limited and smaller style, Edelman simply relied too heavily on synthesizers in a score that really needed more real instrumentation. That mistake is corrected with the help of John Frizzel in Gods and Generals, which really is a unique one in of itself for a historic film score. Most scores for war and history films tend to become too repetitive with only minimal shifts in emotional content and tone. G&G was not like that. A close friend of mine, a music major, was most impressed with the effective and quite frequent shifts in tone present in G&G.