Starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, this history drama tells the heart-stopping story of the first black regiment to fight for the North in the Civil War. Despite the fact that the Civil War is ostensibly being fought on their behalf, the black soldiers are denied virtually every privilege and amenity that is matter of course for their white counterparts; as in armies past and future, they are given the most menial and demeaning of tasks.