 List Price: $9.98 
Amazon.com: This big and sometimes messy movie achieves the seemingly impossible: it demythologizes the American Revolution and lets us see it in a completely new light. Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) has directed a starkly beautiful, powerfully visceral portrait of war from the point of view of the little people who are swept along in its wake. Al Pacino is Tom Dobb, a poor, illiterate trapper bringing up a young son when rebellion breaks out in New York. Dobb's small boat is requisitioned for the war effort, and he and his son become reluctant conscripts. It takes six months and some truly vile treatment by the British before the conflict becomes personal for Dobb and he makes the American cause his own. The Dobb family's tale intersects that of British Sergeant Major Peasy (a formidable Donald Sutherland) and his own son. As the tide of the war turns, the enemies' fortunes are reversed. Tom's love interest, Daisy McConnahay (Nastassja Kinski), is a fiery beauty who breaks from her family of wealthy Tories (British sympathizers) to fight for freedom. Kinski is wonderful as a living Lady Liberty, and Pacino has some extraordinary moments of raw emotion as Dobb. The film's highlights include authentic, grisly re-creations of famous Revolutionary War battles, including Yorktown and Valley Forge. This movie will draw you in, gradually but inexorably, as it creates its convincing and compelling world. --Laura Mirsky Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-05-21
Terrible
Dis the Patriot if you like but it is ten times this film this rotten tomato could ever be. It had potential, it had actors, it had a "feel" of the times but plot, dialogue, character development or simple interest it had not. And what was with that goober on Donald Sutherland's face?However, there is one assault scene during the battle on Long Island that is the most accurate portrayal of British open field tactics I have ever seen. Hardly enough to save the film. Take a pass on this one. Rating: 
Date: 2007-09-05
The best yet...
I guess you either love this movie or hate it. I loved it. I have a degree in history and I am combat veteran of the war in Afghanistan. This is best portrayal yet of the American Revolution. War is dark, dirty and complicated... so are the soldiers who experience it. The movie captures this, and Al Pacino nails the plight of the common foot soldier.
Yes, there are some fact errors, but none as glaring as the ones found in "The Patriot." How does anyone alive today have any knowledge of the accents used in 18th Century America? If you are that picky about details, you probably should stick to reading books. I also long for a perfect movie about the American Revolution. Until someone makes it, this movie works for me.
Rating: 
Date: 2006-10-14
Haunting and real, a cinematic work of art
I chose this film over Gibson's The Patriot for my son to view as part of his course on American history and literature, with no regrets.
The film has a Dickensian feel - narrow dirty alleys in New York and Philadelphia, rain and mud and overcast skies and rugged raw landscape out in the countryside, fires in nooks and crannies of the old cities in the night, characters on the British and American side coming and going until you are dizzy, the filth and grime and misery of war, the apparently hopeless cause gradually coalescing into something able to endure and transcend. Unlike The Crossing - which is also a fine film - Revolution centres on the ordinary people caught up in the war, not the officers and commanders. Nothing here about grand strategy or noble ideals, just the blood and pain and confusion and astonishment of birth. Impeccable acting and sets, this film made me feel dread and discomfort and discouragement as well as scraps of hope - having experienced a few mobs in my own life, and the edge of war, the mob scenes and battle scenes they staged in this film made me uneasy at the noise and chaos and random violence. I have a very great hunch the American Revolution would have looked this way to me if I had been caught up in it.
As Platoon captured the fear and confusion of war in Vietnam without a great overarching perspective, so too does Revolution, although that great overarching perspective of the ideals of American independence is not utterly buried and lost, there are important scenes and some significant dialogue that bring it to the fore throughout the film without turning the script into a July 4th celebration.
No Hollywood formula wrap here. And the theme Mel borrowed of a reluctant father fighting for his son started with this movie, not with his. The difference between Mel's film and Pacino's is that Pacino's really is a work of art, a piece of great cinema, and the story of a father and his son and the revolution in this film is far more credible and enduring and profound. It moves more slowly at times, yes, but the movement gathers such momentum and force that the imagination is far more powerfully impacted than would have been the case otherwise.
Revolution is for those who like great theatre and the acting and scripts that are part of that sort of entertainment and its flesh and blood and depth. Lots of heart and soul here. Five stars. Rating: 
Date: 2006-09-21
A terrible movie!
This has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. There is so much bad to write, I just don't know where to begin. How about with the filming? I think this film was the prototype for those idiotic AT&T commercials back in the eighties with some guy shaking the camera, not able to focus on any particular object. It's very annoying. There are just endless mobs of people roaming about like they just showed up from the filming of "Night of the Living Dead."
Now to the acting. Al Pacino is at his very worst here. He looks and sounds like he's drunk. I don't think he could have been worse if it had been his New Year's resolution. Another reviewer wrote that Pacino's dialect was some sort of Proto-North American. Rubbish!!. He has the typical New York Italian dialect, which is very out of place in revolutionary New York, as Italians did not arrive in NY in large numbers until a good century later. Based on his dialect, a better title might have been `Duh Mob meets duh Bridish." Donald Sutherland is even worse; he looks like he just drank a gallon of vinegar. I really don't know how they could be worse. Pacino's love interest is terrible, absolutely terrible. I couldn't even understand half of what Pacino and Sutherland said. Nor did I care.
The scene in the `house of joy' is utterly ridiculous. The two British officers come across like a couple poofters--one wonders what the ladies are even doing there.
During the movie I was went back and forth between boredom and anger. Boredom because nothing interesting happens; anger because there is nothing to cheer for. Neither side, American or British, is shown as noble. Both sides come across as base and selfish. This was not, as another reviewer has suggested, the common man's view in the war. If such had been the case, no one would have signed up. There simply is nothing to root for. It's movies like this that guarantee that the public will have no interest in movies about the Revolution. That's sad, as it is a very interesting and important part of American history.
I could go on and on and on about how bad this movie is.
Rating: 
Date: 2006-06-01
A bit clipped
This film leaves me a bit on the confused side. Costuming is first class and excellant. The Scenery and settings are first rank. Battle scenes are good and appear realistic. But the plot leaves me a bit confused. I would be inclined to ask if this was originally planned as a great mini-series except the best parts have been clipped out and the rest stitched back together to form something within a time limit.
Al Pacino plays a reluctent patriot forced into the conflict by a series of circumstances. Soon as he gets out, something forces him back in. His love interest (Kinski)is member of a rich loyalist family eager to ingratiate itself with the Crown Forces, who finds herself alienated by their prostituting themselves to the British and leaves to join the Patriots. The fellow who plays Pacino's son does well in growing up. He falls in love with and marries a girl who might be Jewish. Donald Sutherland, the Villein in red, plays a first class swine.
Problem is the scenes are chaotic and hardly run smoothly. The opening scenes and some of the follow up have more in common with the French Revolution than the American. The settings for Yorktown are re-used for Valley Forge. Scenes are shown but no supporting detail. The characters appear ratehr flat. They have relationships that are very Two Dimensional.
Like I said, this would have been a great mini-series except it appears the best scenes were clipped out and the rest stitched together. |
![Alice In Wonderland [TV 1985]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AQZ1NC73L._SL160_.jpg)
