Révolution

After the Academy Awards, the most important awards ceremony is the Golden Raspberries (known as "Razzies") – the "worst of" counterpart to the Oscars. The thing about the Razzies is that they don't go for the literal worst movies of the year – otherwise they would give prizes to a load of trashy B-movies. Instead they bestow their honours upon the high profile flops, the movies that could have been so much more, the casts and crews who should have known better. Revolution stars Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of his generation, and was directed by Hugh Hudson, he of 1981 Best Picture Chariots of Fire. And yet, in a stark "Oh how the mighty have fallen" scenario, it recouped less than two percent of its budget at the box office and was nominated for four Golden Raspberries.

Revolution is not without promise. In contrast to the usual gung-ho attitude of pictures on this subject (cf. The Patriot), this takes an approach rare in historical pictures on any era, showing not the makers and shapers of change, but those unwillingly caught up in it. The Robert Dillon screenplay still ultimately comes down on the side of the revolutionaries, but it shows the conflict with the minimum of political emotiveness, and a storyline whose occasional poignancy comes from its even-handed intimacy. Director Hudson has excelled in creating tableaux that are full of believable bustle and period dirt, even if they were entirely shot in rainy England. There's a realistic melange of accents to be heard here; not just clipped British and broad American, which didn't really exist in any recognisable form at the time anyway. The credibility of some of the bit parts is very effective, such as the bolshy soldier who prods Pacino when he's chosen for the fox hunt, a slappable face if ever there was one.

And yet the movie's the biggest flaws are on the same grounds. There are some woefully unrealistic and downright silly characterisations here. Chief among these is Nastassja Kinski's. While no means badly acted (in fact she does very well all things considered), the character as written is in no way believable. Not that you can't have rebellious and resourceful women, but stabbing a man in the nadgers at a soirée is a bit hard to swallow. It would probably have warranted her a stint in an asylum, and certainly more than just a telling off from her mother. And giving the Englishman in question a stupid nasal voice and cartoonish demeanour was a huge mistake. It all seems totally at odds with the realism elsewhere in the movie. There are problems too with the over-earnest attempt at a documentary look. Hudson's constant use of hand-held camera quickly becomes tiresome. Pacino's performance is heartfelt but there are times when he appears to break into improvisation yet comes across too much as the modern New Yorker.

In response to its poor reception, Hudson would later revisit the material for a 2009 special edition appropriately titled Revolution Revisited, and it is this version of the movie which I have seen. Apparently around ten minutes of footage was shorn off (I don't know what this was so can't comment), and they added narration by Pacino, written and recorded ad hoc. This latter was to my mind a mistake – it adds nothing, basically spelling out the character's thoughts at any given moment, even though the essence of them is already there on the screen. It somewhat spoils the taciturn moodiness of the character, as well as the chaotic wordlessness of some scenes. It's nice however to be able to enjoy a decent new transfer of the picture, because it really isn't as bad as its reputation (and those Razzie nominations, all of which it lost to Rambo II, I hasten to add) would suggest. It is incredibly moving at times, a high point being Pacino's desperate comforting of Ned as his foot wound is cauterized. It's also beautifully shot. This is ultimately a movie of two sides – the very good and the very bad, with no middle ground of mediocrity. And this is very frustrating, because you can see just how easily it could have been a masterpiece.

Sort of both a proto-PATRIOT (though mildly less-addlebrained) with reverse-elements of LAST OF THE MOHICANS (the Huron are the good guys this time around), this film covers the criminally underrepresented ground of the American Revolutionary War in a generally hackneyed way. I did like the recurrence of some elements in the film, such as how it was really "about" bonding with and protecting sons and how the careers of protagonist Pacino contrasted with oddly-cast British antagonist Sutherland. The two characters feel cartoonish at times as Sutherland carries out several heartless atrocities, exemplifying the un-nuanced way British are often depicted as villains, but he also impressively comes off like an honorable human being at the same time.

There's about as many baffling decisions on display as there are surprisingly good ones. What barely qualifies as a "love story" between Pacino and Kinski never makes sense and it's never clear why bougie but idealistic Kinski gets so enthralled with apathetic commoner Pacino. All of Kinski's scenes slow the film down along with many irritating scenes of Pacino getting wronged and stolen from left-and-right with him usually responding by angrily shouting at someone. The actual battle scenes come off very stiff and awkward, though to be fair that was generally the fighting style of the time.

I do give the film credit for actually recasting one of the characters as he ages instead of relying on goofy makeup or prosthetics. I also give it credit for the ending holding back on the most obvious way of concluding the narrative and reminding us that the characters in the film actually are supposed to be human beings. It is a bit baffling though that since the film was made in Europe with so much British money that they went with Donald Sutherland as the villain with a distracting accent. They could easily have cast any number of local British character actors of the day (say someone ike Anthony Hopkins, Paul Darrow, John Hurt, etc and the film would have been 50% better.

A good looking film with a couple nice surprises and believable production design, but unfortunately weighed down with too many flaws and pacing issues.

As a high school US History teacher I often use a few scenes from this film in my classes. I have found value in some elements of this dark, brooding, and sluggish film and think it deserves some credit. Examples are: NY City in the opening and closing scenes, (they are our history books brought to life). The battles of NY, specifically Long Island and Brooklyn Heights (the film is vague as to which exact battle this is) the complicated world of Nastasia Kinski's character Daisy, daughter of loyalists, mother yes, but which side is her father really on? Additionally, the miserable conditions at Valley Forge, and very importantly, Tom and Ned "quitting" the war after their first battle (Historically Washington's "grand army" melted away by the autumn of 1776). As a teacher I love the resource of this film. As a parent I want my children to be exposed, As a period movie fan I don't love this film very much.

I've just seen "Revolution" on TV and I have to say that it's a much better movie than one may think. Sometimes a movie is worth-seeing only because of its wonderful production values. And "Revolution" is an eye-popping visual feat: wonderful cinematography, first-rate period details. I might say that beside Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" and Tony Richardson's "Tom Jones", this is the most beautifully made period movie about the eighteenth century. "Revolution" is also an important film because there are only about a dozen films on the Revolutionary War and almost all of them are a matter of obscurity - at least for a Hungarian movie lover. The most popular is Roland Emmerich's "The Patriot" (2000). In my opinion that's a much worse film than Hudson's maligned film. When "Revolution" was released it was a critical and commercial disaster. I think it didn't fit in any of the movie trends of the 1980s. But in the future it might be regarded as a flawed but valuable movie. Its flaws are obvious and much-discussed so I don't want to speak about them. If you're interested in beautiful period pieces and the Revolutionary War you might like this movie.

"Revolution" could have been a fascinating story. Unfortunately, it seems that director Hugh Hudson had shot his entire wad when he made the Oscar-winning "Chariots of Fire". Both "Greystoke" and this film were sloppy, choppy messes with no narrative flow. It is confounding, because it is obvious that there was a lot of attention to detail in parts of "Revolution". But only in parts. There is as much here that simply doesn't fit--the most glaring example being Al Pacino performance as a colonial trapper. He apparently forgot what movie he was in, and frequently uses a halting accent very similar to the one he used only two years earlier in Brian DePalma's "Scarface". And I don't think his character was supposed to be Cuban. The rest of the film produces the same effect you would get from flipping through a beautiful set of American Revolution postcards--at random.