Robert Gould Shaw, the hero of GLORY, was a real life officer in the Union army. But none of the critics ever attacked GLORY or patronized the personal story of Robert Gould Shaw the way they patronized the story of Newton Knight. The problem with that argument is that it would apply equally well to a movie like GLORY which covers similar events in the exact same time period.
A lot of left wing critics tried to put this movie down as a "white savior" movie in which a perfect white guy has all the answers and saves everyone.
Now with critics I think the story is a lot more sinister. So the bottom line is that the general audience was bored to death. None of them have any personal grudge against him and no personal magnetism of their own. But Newton Knight just fights a bunch of no-name dastardly Confederate officers, most of whom are portrayed as cowardly or incompetent. William Wallace goes up against Longshanks, Edward I of England, who is so terrifying he almost jumps off the screen. Judah Ben Hur goes up against Massala in the chariot race, and they have a whole lot of personal history. Related to that problem is the fact that Newton Knight doesn't square off with one single baddie who's tough enough to make it a real fight. He's not driven by personal anger or passion, just by an abstract love of justice. Newton Knight is just a lovable guy from the word go (we first see him hugging a scared boy on the battlefield, then holding him while he dies) and he has no personal demons (or prejudices) to overcome. It's too long, it covers too much ground, and while Matthew McConaughey gives the role of ex-Confederate freedom fighter Newton Knight everything he's got, the character just doesn't jump off the screen like Charlton Heston in BEN HUR or Mel Gibson in BRAVEHEART. It's easy to see why the mass audience didn't like this movie.
And critics didn't seem to want to go to bat for it either. This is a movie that got a lot of attention when it came out a few years ago, yet somehow it never connected with audiences.
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