Wolff rating: NOT BAD/GOOD
Plot summary: In the American Revolution, a man is caught between his desire to protect his family and his patriotism.
Biased, pithy comments: This has a split-rating because, boy, I couldn't decide which hat I was going to wear. Like ``Braveheart,'' the historian/reconstructionist in me was annoyed when they put the brilliance of Nathaniel Greene into Mel Gibson's mouth, and the portrayal of the British was pretty one-sided (although not as bad as I had been led to expect), and most egregiously they portray some totally made up battle for an American victory. Most of Greene's ``victories'' were really Pyrrhic victories for the British; the Americans broke and ran, but they occupied Cornwallis enough to stop him from buttoning up the South. They *were* vital battles and brilliantly played, but they weren't traditional victories. Cowpens, a great American victory in the South, is a major exception, and Emmerlich is clearly using that as his base (including the dragoon charge) to reconstruct, but even that doesn't work, since it was not under the command of Nathaniel Greene, but rather Daniel Morgan. So, it's a mess historically, and given how interesting and colorful that time was, it seems silly to write your own American Revolution except as an exercise in hubris. Once you get over that, though, it's pretty good entertainment; the battle scenes are fun to watch, the overheated rhetoric is played in earnest, and you can't help grinning at the young love between Gabriel and Anne. No one does cliched spectacle like Emmerlich, and he's in full form. So, I enjoyed myself, but was saddened at how they wrecked a perfectly good real-life story to tell their fake one because real life isn't as formulaic as Hollywood.
Other Notes: You know, if Emmerlich could keep his finger off the slo-mo trigger, the movie would have been about 2/3rds as long. Sheesh.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Tcheky Karyo, Lisa Brenner.
Directed by: Roland Emmerlich