i love matthew but find it hard to take him seriously in this role. he looks and sounds like like a little kid. not his fault but there it is. miscast? for the same reason i find it hard to find leo dicaprio believable in many of his movies..he's got such a baby face. in titanic when he and kate winslet were together it looked like a grown woman with a teenager.
shareyou realize Colonel Shaw was 25 at the time of his death at Fort Wagner. So I call it accurate.
shareHe was actually close to the historical age. But you have to admit he looked like a kid with a glued on mustache. I've known plenty of guys who looked much older and more mature than him at 18 let alone 26.
shareOn the contrary. The casting (and the performance) were perfect. In real life, military personnel are very young, on average, a fact that movies almost always hide behind middle-aged actors, in part, I'm convinced, to avoid informing the audience that warfare is horrific and not glorious or fun. And it's already been pointed out here that Matthew was more or less exactly the age of the man he portrayed in this film, so the whole situation is extremely authentic from that perspective.
Further, Shaw was the product of a comfortable, well-to-do Boston family, pumped into senior rank by his family's connections, wartime attrition, and political circumstance. He was literally a freshly ex-adolescent handed a giant scary job that his life to date had nowhere near prepared him to do, but that he was determined to do right. Matthew did an outstanding job portraying that quandary, from having to learn the difference between regulations and effective practice, to dealing with older officers who looked down on and ignored him.
The telling scene is when Undertaker, having just been made sergeant major, quietly tells Shaw, "Thank you sir, but I'm not sure I want it", and Shaw immediately responds, "I know just what you mean!"
Now that I'm old, I see myself at Shaw's age in every Broderick scene. The actor and director were both geniuses.
I didn't find the age distracting, but I would say that Broderick always comes off a little too "contemporary" for a period piece like this. He's doing a fine job, but he comes off as modern and a bit out of place as a result. Maybe I was just latching onto the odd accent, which seemed (to my ears) to come and go.
shareThat was a problem for me, too. I can understand why he wanted to move into more serious adult roles but I think they should have gotten someone better suited for the role.
shareMatthew was actually two years older than the real Shaw who died at 25 years of age.
But yes Matthew does look young and I often feel like I am watching Ferris Bueller play soldier.