Don't listen to the negative reviews

A Disappointing Continuation

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It's 1776. France and England are in perpetual war. After the Declaration of Independence, British troops land in New York. Fur trapper Tom Dobb (Al Pacino) had lost most of his family. All he has left is his boat and his son. The revolutionaries confiscate his boat and they promise to pay him in gold in two weeks after the war is to end. His son Ned unwittingly signs up for the revolution and Tom is forced to join up to protect him. Daisy McConnahay (Nastassja Kinski) is the rebellious daughter of a rich New York family. She is drawn to the revolution and rebels against his war profiteering father. Sgt. Maj. Peasy (Donald Sutherland) is the ruthless English soldier who fights alongside his drummer boy son.The son is the brattiest of brats. Pacino is Italian to his core. There is no way to alleviate that and his natural accent doesn't help. Kinski is foreign in her accent and annoyingly arrogant in her rebellion. Of course, her family is horribly selfish. The British are cartoonish. The revolutionaries don't start off well either. It's an ugly world overall. The only compelling work comes from Sutherland who knows how to play his uncomprising role without becoming a caricature. It is interesting to depict the rebellion start with such an ugly mob. Usually they're more noble than that. That has to be a part of the reason why this movie bombed so badly. There are also other pressing problems.It's notable that the black actors barely speak a word. I'm sure the movie is trying to say a little something about slavery. In Philadelphia, the slaves are rising up as freedom rings out all around them but it's left confused. Obviously, none of them are freed in reality but it's not clear from the movie. I think the blacks being march off in the opposite direction is suppose to be them being sent into slavery in the south. I also have a problem with Pacino fighting off the two Indian scouts. It's barely believable and it would be easily solved if the friendly Indians arrive a minute earlier. They could help him kill the two Indian scouts. In addition, I don't understand why he doesn't go with his son at the end. He spends the entire movie rescuing his son but leaves him for the city life. That's stupid. I don't mind portraying the war as an ugly affair but this one is not that good.

Al Pacino goes all angsty in this film version of the American War of Independence, a film surprisingly made by the Brits (surprising given the content of the storyline). REVOLUTION was bad enough to single-handedly destroy the British film industry in the late 1980s, and it only really got going again a decade later.Whichever way you look at it, this is dull stuff indeed. Pacino's heart clearly isn't in it, and he feels and sounds like a very boring Tony Montana here. Donald Sutherland plays a British villain, somewhat inexplicably, and watching him struggling with a Yorkshire accent of all things is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in a movie.REVOLUTION's general look and feel is decent, and Norway makes a good stand-in for true American locales. But the battle scenes are cheap-looking and the storyline never really goes anywhere despite the lengthy running time. Everybody seems to be a bad guy and the performances are way over the top; take Richard O'Brien for example. The only fun I had from it was spotting the youthful British stars at the beginning of their careers (Dexter Fletcher, Robbie Coltrane, Sid Owen, etc.), otherwise this is boring stuff indeed.

I had wanted to see this movie for quite some time, but for some strange reason it never appeared on television despite its cast. However, I finally managed to find a copy of it at a specialized video store in my city. (The version I found was the director's cut.) So what did I think of it? Well, I admit that the look of the movie is very convincing. The costumes, props, and set decoration look fantastic. It really seems that they captured what the colonies were like more than 200 years ago.However, the story and characters are less convincing. For example, the movie seems to suggest that most Americans were pro-revolution. In actual fact, a third were pro-revolution, another third were British loyalists, and the remaining third either didn't care or were undecided. Another odd fact is that the movie portrays just about all of the pro- revolutionists as despicable - odd because the filmmakers were trying to sell this movie to the American public! Actually, most of the other characters in the movie, like the British soldiers, are also shown in a negative light. There are precious few characters in the movie to care about. The actors try, but a lot of the roles are shallow. Donald Sutherland and Nastassja Kinski have little to do despite their billing.There are other problems in the movie I could go on for some time listing, like Pacino's extensive yet completely unnecessary narration. Still, I will admit that while I didn't like the movie, I wasn't bored at any moment. There's plenty of eye candy, and I confess a curiosity as to how Pacino's character would end up. The movie isn't as bad as some critics have claimed... though I won't hesitate to add that it wasn't worth the years I searched for a way to see it.

'Tom Dobb' (Al Pacino) and son arrive in New York harbor to be greeted by street urchin Annie Lennox.... Annie Lennox?.... who immediately conscripts Dobb's boat for the war effort, and then instructs an Army captain to give Tom a receipt for it. Apparently, American Army officers took orders from random tramps in the 18th century.Soon, Dobb meets 'Daisy' (Nasty Kinski) who berates Tom and his son for running away from a battle after the British begin blasting them with bits of chain-link fired out of a cannon. "I thought you might have stood your ground, Mr. Dobb", says Daisy. Fortunately Daisy's brashness didn't prompt Dobb to knock out all her teeth. Mostly boring Revolutionary War drama complete with time-filling digressions including a 'foxhunt' in which Dobb flees from a lace handkerchief-wielding English captain (Richard O'Brien) while tied to an effigy of "poor ol' Georgie Washington".Another Hollywood film which depicts the British people as evil incarnates. Do you ever wonder why Hollywood keeps doing that?