Early Reviews Praise New “Grant” Series

The reviews are beginning to come in on the new bio-docudrama “Grant” on the History Channel.

The Wall Street Journal gave the miniseries a favorable review:

The three-night, biographical epic about the Union Army leader and 18th U.S. president—and devoted husband, virtuoso horseman, alcoholic binge drinker and political naif—begins on Memorial Day and follows the standard formula for historical specials: expert testimony, dramatic re-enactments, period photography, maps and montages. But it is all executed at a much higher level than viewers are used to.

The 1862 battle of Shiloh—the “bloodbath” that bookends episode 1 and marks “the point where Grant becomes Grant,” as Harry Laver of the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College puts it—provides a disturbingly realistic introduction to Civil War-fare. Rifle fire comes from nowhere, the bullets find their marks with the kind of soft plunk that spells death; the sound in general is as alarming as the bloodletting. The re-enactments are also a cut above, including the performances—notably Justin Salinger’s portrayal of Grant, which suggests a mid-career Clint Eastwood: Beard bristling, brow knotted, his Grant is never flummoxed by tactical disadvantage or exhilarated by a victory. He never seems to entertain the idea that he could lose at all.

Mr. Salinger makes his character a man of silent passion and steely determination, and he does so within a format that doesn’t lend itself to expansive performance, interrupted as it is by interview testimony. But something just as unlikely and memorable happens with those interviews, which are sprinkled throughout the nearly six-hour miniseries. The experts on hand include historians, academics, military tacticians and, naturally, author Ron Chernow, whose 2017 biography provided his subject a place in the modern consciousness. (Mr. Chernow and Leonardo DiCaprio are among the show’s many executive producers.) What the commentators have to say is illuminating, of course. But director Malcolm Venville and his editors have used the interviews to fit the dramatic momentum of the various episodes in Grant’s life. The enthusiasms and excitement of a given expert speaker link up emotionally with the re-enactments that follow, without the customary hiccups in pacing. The music (by Russell Emanuel and Jacob Shea) picks up the beat further.

The reviewer does feel that the series gives too little time to the Grant presidency, which after all was eight tumultuous years long.

Newsday also liked the series. According to Newsday:

If casual viewers know anything about the Civil War, they know two names — Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant. Lee’s may be the more venerated, at least in the South, but Grant’s is the more compelling. As “Grant” points out, both were exceedingly aggressive generals, but Grant was the one saddled with the “butcher” reputation. As consolation, “Grant” at least restores the other reputation, as an effective and often inspired battlefield tactician. 

What matters most over these three nights is the stretch dealing with his presidency. As 18th POTUS, Grant followed perhaps the worst president in American history. Andrew Johnson willfully reversed the gains of African Americans, then Grant willfully reversed Johnson: As “Grant” establishes, he neutered the Ku Klux Klan, restored voting rights for blacks, and oversaw their resurgence in political office during his first term. Chernow calls this presidency a “heroic” one, which is the best way to remember Grant — also the best way to wrap the series. 

Except we already know how it will wrap. His presidency became mired in corruption, through no direct fault of his own, and the electorate abandoned Reconstruction. That’s the memory that does endure. 

“Grant” also says that the so-called “Lost Cause” narrative of the Civil War has infected historic perspective in the years since, at Grant’s expense. (“Lost Cause?” That misty-eyed nonsense that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not over slavery.) That may seem a bit too simplistic — at least as presented here — but “Grant” does make the more important point: He was a champion of Reconstruction. Heroic indeed. 

As a viewing experience, “Grant” is often engaging. While the docudrama dialogue can be clunky — the common fault of these things — the battle scenes are much better. All those cliches of Civil War narratives — the bodies stacked like cordwood, the bullets like hail — are made vivid here. War is hell, all right.

Salinger’s (“Ripper Street”) Grant is good, too. His eyes capture what Grant must have felt: Unbearable sadness yoked to ironclad resolution.

From the Daily Beast:

“Grant” is an active attempt to rehabilitate the historical record, positing Confederate adversary Robert E. Lee as a symbol of the intolerant, aristocratic, treasonous old guard, and Grant as an emblem of a more open, just, unified modern America. Grant’s disgust for the Confederacy and the rancidness it stood for is on full display throughout this series, which pointedly contends that—good ol’ boy revisionism be damned—it was slavery, not simply the more euphemistic “states’ rights,” which drove the South to secede and take up arms against the Union. At the same time, Grant’s compassion and levelheadedness also remains front and center, epitomized by the lenient terms of surrender he ultimately offered to the defeated Lee, which helped him secure support throughout the South in the years following the end of the war.

Grant’s prolonged focus on the lieutenant general’s most famous wartime decisions means that the series is directly aimed at those with a fondness for in-depth military history. Nonetheless, the context it provides about Grant’s life, both as a young man and as an eight-year resident of the Oval Office, deepens its argument about the titanic nature of his achievements, and the greatness of his character—both of which make him, no matter the vantage point, one of the true, indispensable founders of the American republic.

 

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Author: Patrick Young

10 thoughts on “Early Reviews Praise New “Grant” Series

  1. Couldn’t they have cast somebody that actually looked like Grant? Justin Salinger looks so little like him it’s a huge distraction. Every time I see him I have to try to convince myself again this guy is supposed to be Grant. And sorry, just some guy in a beard doesn’t cut it.
    Daniel Day Lewis was supremely convincing as Lincoln. As Grant, Salinger just barely is.

    1. It is interesting that they could not hire someone who was younger and better looking to take on this role. Grant was born in 1822, so he wasn’t 40 years old until one year after the war began, and was just 43 the year it ended. Sherman and Longstreet are barely any older, but they are all portrayed as older men.

      I recorded the series on our DVD, and I still have a 2 hour segment to watch, but I Agree that the commercial interruptions seriously undermine the continuity of the broadcast, particularly because of the recapping of the previous episode which is so much a part of commercial television broadcasting.

      A worse fault is the apparent omission of any mention of how Grant turned around the disastrous Chattanooga campaign. Instead, the program seems to skip directly from Vickburg to command of all of the Union armies. They also missed the opportunity to show what happened when Grant came to Washington to assume command, and checked into a hotel accompanied by his young son. Evidently, he did not identify himself and was not recognized until after he signed the register, at which point hotel staff scrambled to provide him a better room than he at first had been assigned to.

      A worse fault is that the film seems to dwell on portraying Grant as a front-line leader galloping around and giving orders off the cuff, whereas the fact is that Grant was primarily an acute planner who developed a plan, gave clear and concise orders to his subordinate generals, and then allowed the orders to be carried out by them without much in the way of direct interference. The documentary is also pretty short on maps that show how his battles were fought and how he pursued his campaigns of out-flanking and direct advances.

      But these are picky points. Overall, this is a fine documentary, despite its minor flaws.

  2. The amount of commercials and the amount of cuts in the narrative to accomodate those interuptions in the story, were very distracting. Also I agree that the Grant actor looked very little like Grant himself and the performance was without nuance. He stared morosely and smoked or chewed on his cigar. He did little else. That is the fault of the director. I am sure the actor is a competent one but I think he was the wrong casting choice. Casting is so important in documentaries like this one. We all have seen photos of these famous historical characters; to not have a better resemblance to the famous general is a huge flaw and really does not allow you to get a complete understanding of Grant.

  3. I agree with others that the amount of time dedicated to commercials during the performance tonight was excessive and so distracting as to ruin the viewing experience for me. I had to simply turn the TV off in frustration part way through the show.

  4. I enjoyed Grant very much. It now it’s now one of my civil war movie favorites along with Gettysburg,Glory and others. I’m lucky I got to see it at a friends without commercials it makes a big difference.

  5. I completely enjoyed Justin Salinger’s portrayal of U. S. Grant. He represented Grant as he was…a military genius who never took a step backward, & who did not allow nonsense from anyone! He nailed Grant!

  6. I read his Personal Memoirs and at least two biographies on him back in the 1980s. I then wrote a history paper on him in High school. I came to see long ago a great role model, a guy beaten down but he kept getting up and who “failed in everything but love and war.” He was a great family man and for them, never gave up. It’s this theme and fact that endured all his life, right up to the final months when he had to battle cancer to finish his personal memoirs to provide for his destitute family. He made a half million for his family and died two weeks after its completion. What a way to go out!

    I often ran up against the common narrative that he was a drunk and a butcher. This movie really does him justice and lets us see him for who he was. I always thought those arrogant eastern generals always wanted to bring him down because he was a man of the west. So the drinking got exaggerated and distorted through gossip and slander. Fortunately, he was able to overcome it all and help bring our country back together again.

    I do wish it could have been acknowledged that the South didn’t just leave over slavery. They wanted to be free to remove the tariffs against British manufactured goods. These tariffs caused Britain to retaliate with tariffs against American cotton and made it difficult for southerners to buy what was at times cheaper or better British goods and difficult for them to sell their cotton. As the Confederacy, they would have been financially benefited and the North hurt.

  7. The uniforms and fighting of the Civil War parts are distracting and unrealistic. Who bought all those bad hats and uniforms and hired terrible extras should have been fired.

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