ShareThisThis week's release of a new DVD version of Hugh Hudson's "Revolution" -- starring Al Pacino as a New York trapper who gets caught up in this country's battle for independence -- reminds us that Roland Emmerich's "The Patriot" has some competition for the worst film about the American Revolution.
Originally released in 1985, Hudson's movie has re-emerged in a director's cut edition with a new edit and new ending, the addition of narration by Pacino's character and a sort-of new title, "Revolution Revisited" (Warner Home Video, $19.97, rated PG-13). The new DVD is part of Warner's Director's Showcase series, along with John Boorman's "Beyond Rangoon," Michelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point" and David Cronenberg's "M. Butterfly." A fifth film in the series, Hal Ashby's "Lookin' to Get Out," will come out June 30.
"Revolution" was met with near universal condemnation and derision when it made its theatrical debut at the end of 1985. One prominent critic, Vincent Canby of The New York Times, described it as "a mess," "giddily misguided" and "England's answer to 'Heaven's Gate.'" He referred to Pacino's performance as "look[ing] as if he were an 18th-century Rambo and sound[ing] as if he were speaking 20th-century David Mamet."
The film's financial losses were staggering. Shot in Britain and Norway at a cost of $28 million, it took in less than $400,000 at the domestic box office, according to Box Office Mojo.
Why should we care about a movie that bounces incoherently from 1775, when the American colonies are in virtual revolt against Britain, through the bitter winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, the decisive victory of the Continental Army against the Redcoats? Or that, even with Hudson's new edit, characters show up in incongruous places in relationships that have never been adequately explained? Well, Hudson ("Chariots of Fire") deserves praise for attempting to make a film about the American Revolution that: 1) recognizes that at the onset of the war the colonists were about evenly divided among rebels, Tories and those who didn't take a side, and 2) shows how the Revolution affected ordinary people, like Pacino's apolitical Tom Dobb or Nastassja Kinski's Daisy McConnahay, the rebellious daughter of an aristocratic Tory family.
Hudson, using a hand-held camera, provides as realistic a view of those times as we have seen on film. He depicts the teeming and chaotic streets of late 18th-century New York and the political power of revolutionary mobs, and the Battle of Brooklyn between the well-organized British soldiers and the rag-tag, poorly trained Continental Army.
The director and his star offer a vigorous defense of their film and an explanation of its limitations in a DVD interview, "Revisiting Revolution: A Conversation with Al Pacino and Director Hugh Hudson." They admit that their film was rushed into theatrical release three or four months too early, before it was finished, at the behest of Goldcrest, its British production company. Hudson says this prevented him from making "changes we didn't have time to do or were unable to do."
Hudson's re-edit fails to make much of a structural improvement. The addition of Pacino's narration (recorded in 2008) may offer insight into Tom Dobbs' inner feelings, but it doesn't make up for the lack of connectivity between scenes. And Hudson's decision to change the ending, which he says was imposed on him by Warner Bros., the film's American distributor, does not strike this critic as a good one.
Pacino says that "Revolution" was "unfairly treated" upon its release and admits "I got picked on for it." Much fun was made of his accent as the illiterate trapper, but Pacino and Hudson claim the accent was considered very accurate by the language specialists they consulted. Pacino believes that audiences had difficulty accepting him as an 18th-century man who lived off the land when all of his previous movie roles had been of 20th century urban types.
Hudson also thinks that "Revolution" suffered from being released at an inauspicious time -- the era of Ronald Reagan and "Rambo." His gritty movie about an anti-hero finds dishonesty and less-than-noble actions on the part of all sides in the conflict. Although the film is clearly pro-American in sentiment, it is hardly gung-ho.
"Revolution" was attacked for not being filmed in the United States. In an interview earlier this year for the British newspaper The Observer, Hudson defended using Norfolk, England, as the movie's setting, though he admits that constant rain and an ill Pacino (suffering from pneumonia during much of the shoot) contributed to the movie's difficulties. As for using Norway locations to film certain scenes, Hudson cites financial backing from a group of Norwegian dentists who were investors.
From this critic's vantage point, the locations generally aren't a problem -- save for some scenes supposedly set near the Battle of Yorktown that look more like the rocky English coast or a Norwegian fjord than the Virginia coast.
What separates Hudson's "Revolution Revisited" from Emmerich's "The Patriot" (2000) is the former's honesty and the latter's willingness to seriously tamper with historical veracity. Though both Pacino's Tom Dobb and Mel Gibson's Benjamin Martin are reluctant warriors drawn to the cause out of personal desperation, Martin and his ragtag band of South Carolina guerrillas appear to win the War of Independence nearly by themselves against a Nazi-like foe. Furthermore, the close and equitable relationship between farmer Martin and his African American employees -- don't call them slaves! -- is absurd, given the South Carolina setting.
"Revolution Revisited" is much more truthful than "The Patriot" in its depiction of those times and its portrait of the people who fought for liberty. Yet the film requires more than a new edit and a new narration to become a good, comprehensible piece of work.
"Revolution Revisited": 2 stars
Cast: Al Pacino, Nastassja Kinski, Donald Sutherland, Joan Plowright and Dexter Fletcher .
Director: Hugh Hudson
Writer: Robert Dillon .
Distributor: Warner Home Video
Rated PG-13
(Contact Bruce Dancis at brucedancis(at)comcast.net.)
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