Another typical Hollywood movie

Rating: 2/10 (4 July 2000)

Director Roland Emmerich's hamfisted direction was great for a campy movie like ID-4, when you should oversell things, but is much more frustrating when he tries to play it straight (i.e. Godzilla which could have been very over-the-top entertaining). This movie is basically a tin-ear rendition of Braveheart: Mel Gibson takes a really long time to fight British war criminals for revenge and family. There is some small mention of larger causes for the war, such as, oh, taxation without representation, but being a Mel Gibson movie it has to make things personal.
Like Braveheart, the battle scenes were the most interesting - showing how battles from the Peloponnesian War to WWI were won and lost by morale and discipline, rather than through superior machinery. Unlike Braveheart, the plot and many supporting characters are uninteresting and shallow. For example, a minister gets his rifle and joins Mel Gibson on his quest for vengeance. Why? He gives a nice pat answer (he must protect his flock from the wolves), and goes merrily on his Brit-killing way. A local Tory who has joined the British Army is ordered to commit a horrible atrocity against his neighbors (no spoilers here), and hesitates for all of five seconds before doing so. Does he feel any guilt whatsoever? Who knows. There are far too many characters like these which are Hollywood shorthand for in-depth characters.
Supposedly the filmmakers took great pains to make the movie historically semi-accurate, but they neglected to hire a speech coach for these revolutionary rednecks. The 90s PC-ness gets nauseating during every scene featuring slaves, who apparently were well-treated happy black Ewoks, also speaking modern American English with no accent or dialect. No wonder slavery wasn't abolished for another 90 years, they were happy as it was. There is also the token slave fighting for freedom, whose white comrades at first treat him with disdain but develop a respect for him by the end. I would rather have not seen any black characters at all than have this Hollywood version of slavery shoved down my throat.
Obviously you know who wins the war, but the rest of the plot is equally predictable. Within about fifteen minutes you know the main love interest, the primary villain (who has apparently been transplanted from 90s Rwanda or Bosnia), and who will live and die. I will say there was one point in the plot which REALLY surprised me - for all of ten seconds, before the villain pulls a Jason and comes back from the dead. If you want to watch a war movie that makes you think, rent Glory (or better yet read Thucydides). If you want a war movie that offers mindless flag-waving fun - some guy's head gets taken off by a cannonball! Dogs like Mel Gibson better than fat old Englishmen! Mel's kids do not visibly age or grow for five years! - go see the Patriot.