Best movie of this year hands down!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Awful effort on alternative outlook on history. Spike Lee? He made mistakes, too. Why on Earth making such a blatant parody of Ken Scott and Shelby Foote's Civil War masterpiece which was and is an unbeatable peak? Why, even if you did, do this newer effort such a rushes, rash-ed, rueful, woeful mish mash of all wrong elements possible? Badly calculated, poorly executed, terribly done, this short (and this Is the only redeeming quality of the effort) mocks the very core essence of Civil War achievements and depicts several sacred cows as desacralized calves. The worst moment? Alleged older Lincoln interview. Made me sick and filled with wrath. Wasted effort of dubious merit and horrible conclusion.

Here are some big facts left out of the movie.In 1864, the Confederate States began to abandon slavery. There are some indications that even without a war, the Confederacy would have ended slavery. Most historians believe that the Confederacy only started to abandon slavery once their defeat was imminent. If that were true then we are to believe that the CSA wanted independence more than they wanted to hold on to slavery.The CSA's highest ranking generals, Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston were not slave holders and did not believe in slavery. And according to an 1860 census, only 31% of families owned slaves. 75% of families that owned slaves owned less than 10 and often worked beside them in the fields.The Confederate Constitution banned the overseas slave trade, and permitted Confederate states to abolish slavery within their borders if they wanted to do so.Slavery wasn't abolished until 1868, 3 years after the war. Thus Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware still had slaves.The confederate Congress specified that black soldiers were to receive the same pay as the white soldiers. The Union army's black soldiers were paid less than the white soldiers.A black soldier in the Union army would have been paid $10 a month with a $3 clothing fee taken out, leaving the soldier with $7 a month. White soldiers were paid $13 a month and were not forced to pay a clothing allowance, which is almost twice as much as the black soldiers. By contrast the Confederate army paid their privates of both races $11/month until 1864.Equal pay for both races in the federal army did not come into effect until June 1864. The Confederate Army also authorized a salary for black musicians in 1862.

You want laughs? You want controversy? You want to pick a fight? Invite your friends over to watch this. This is amazing, thought-provoking alternative history. Go on, critics, harp on its historical inaccuracies and its not-at-all-veiled agenda. Or just come right out and insist that Spike Lee and Kevin Wilmott are racist and that the film was amateurish and crude and could never have happened. I'm not a big fan of the Spikester myself. But I really enjoyed this flick, pretty much from beginning to end, and I'll freely admit that there were a couple of times I just squirmed uncomfortably at the sight of some of the things portrayed. Good films do that. Could those events have really happened? Probably not. Does that detract from their impact? Not one iota.A recommendation: Harry Turtledove's "Guns of the South" offers another perspective on how things might've been, and does it through a SF plot twist. If you liked CSA, you'll probably appreciate it. Not surprisingly, it has an equally checkered review history...

This film is both funny and jarring in its use of actual and fake racist products. But the basic premise of the film is terribly flawed.As others have pointed out, the South did not desire to possess the North, only to become a separate nation. But more important than this is the fact that the South lacked the capability to conquer the North. The South had a nation of 9 million(half of whom were slaves) and the North had 22 million. The North had most of the industry which in turn permitted them to arm their larger forces with an ease the South could only dream of. The South's navy consisted mainly of a few ironclads and blockade runners. In sum, the North had more people, more arms, and more ships by a large margin. This is akin to saying that the US could have conquered and occupied England in the aftermath of the Revolution. The entire premise of the film is rendered ridiculous by historical facts. Satire always has a bit of the absurd element to it, but in order to be effective it must exhibit a grasp of the basic facts. This film does not exhibit such knowledge.Secondly, the Allies in WWII would not have defeated Nazi Germany. England would have fallen as France, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, et all. If Russia would have won Europe would have been enslaved by that Communist Leviathan. Both continents would have in the embrace of despotic governments.This film is amusing on its face, but a closer examination of the historiography indicates that the producers of this film have a poor grasp of the American Civil War. This is an intellectually light, comedy heavy film. Treat it as nothing but comedy.