1985-12-25
$28.0M
126 min
New York trapper Tom Dobb becomes an unwilling participant in the American Revolution after his son Ned is drafted into the Army by the villainous Sergeant Major Peasy. Tom attempts to find his son, and eventually becomes convinced that he must take a stand and fight for the freedom of the Colonies, alongside the aristocratic rebel Daisy McConnahay. As Tom undergoes his change of heart, the events of the war unfold in large-scale grandeur.
Al Pacino transported to the American Revolution
After the Declaration of Independence, a fur trapper (Pacino) & his son are inadvertently enlisted in the Continental Army in the summer of 1776, wherein they find themselves fighting The Battle of Long Island. They end up working as scouts and are at Valley Forge during the cold winter of 1777-1778, as well as Yorktown in 1781. Nastassja Kinski plays a woman from an aristocratic family who joins the patriots while Donald Sutherland is on hand as an officer in the British Army.
"Revolution" (1985) was made by the acclaimed director of “Chariots of Fire” and “Greystoke,” but the film flopped at the box office and was nominated for four Razzies. Is it THAT bad? No. It does a good job of taking the viewer into the midst of the Revolutionary War as a foot soldier or worker with the use of handheld cameras. The situation isn’t fun; it’s chaotic, life-threatening, dirty, grisly and full of hardships. The Continentals are a ragtag group of Americans suffering privations while the Redcoats are a disciplined, well-supplied army with degenerate officers. Speaking of which, the Brits aren’t painted in a positive light.
While the film isn’t as effective as “The Patriot,” especially in regard to character development, it makes for a worthwhile companion piece since it involves the northern theater of the war and the other the Carolina theater. On the downside, the English and Norwegian locations are sometimes a questionable substitution for New York, Pennsylvania and coastal Virginia, especially the mountains of Norway (standing in for northern New York and the Saint Lawarence River region, I think), but at least they’re picturesque and the sequences don’t last long.
The scene where Daisy leaves the fort at Valley Forge and is attacked by a British detachment on horseback is awkwardly executed but, hey, it’s a movie, not a documentary. I was inspired to look-up the real history.
The movie runs 2 hour, 6 minutes, but there’s a Director’s Cut from 2009 that’s 10 minutes shorter and features narration by Pacino. It was largely filmed in southern England, as follows: The old dock area of King's Lynn, Norfolk, as well as near Thetford, Norfolk, and Melton Constable Hall. The main battle sequences were shot at Burrator Reservoir on Dartmoor in Devon and on the coastal cliff top near Challaborough Bay, South Devon, which is where the wooden fort was built. The scenic scenes where Dobb is with the Huron were shot in Norway.
GRADE: B-
