Film Review: ‘Beyond Glory’

Stephen Lang mounted a one-man tribute show that played off-Broadway, throughout America, and on military bases all over the world. Now it’s a film.
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Almost half of all U.S. Medal of Honor honorees served during the Civil War. It has been bestowed posthumously 621 times throughout history. Currently, only seventy-seven recipients are still living. In all ways they are the elite of the elite.

Adapting Larry Smith’s popular history of select recipients, Stephen Lang mounted a one-man tribute show that played off-Broadway, throughout America, and on military bases all over the world. Cross-cutting between several of Lang’s more notable command performances, director-editor Larry Brand shows the theater piece in its entirety while conveying its wider significance during a time of war and armed hostility in “Beyond Glory.”

Strictly speaking, Lang is kind of white-ish, but he plays two African Americans, one Asian American, and several working class white ethnic Americans, without any stilted awkwardness. After all, it would be un-American to exclude anyone on the basis of race. There is no question each recipient’s story merits inclusion. Of course, they all have the Medal of Honor to prove it.

There is no shortage of moments in "Beyond Glory" to choke you up.
Joe Bendel
Joe Bendel
Author
Joe Bendel writes about independent film and lives in New York City. To read his most recent articles, visit JBSpins.blogspot.com
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