Wasn't ever into the Revolutionary War...

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2000)

CONTAINS SPOILERS
As far as history went, I was either 20th Century or Medieval. But moving to Boston, and seeing this movie, is starting to change all that. Ok, sure, it was hokey the whole thing with avenging Thomas' death with a bullet made from the melted lead of his last toy soldier..? Oh, how Perfect but it WAS pretty good (from what I know, anyway, since I just said I don't know much about this period) representation of what war was like, and what ordinary people had to put up with, while a war was going on. We don't get that with 20th Century wars -- they were all fought "over there" and not in our front yards (as was a battle in this film). This is like historical fiction - the period depiction is accurate, the people (aside from the obvious famous ones, like Cornwallis) aren't - though they may be based on real people, or reminiscent of real people.
It's not supposed to teach you the Battle for Independence, this movie. It's supposed to make you think about the costs and the rewards of going to war - any war. Sure, the whole race issue was sanitized (did you notice everyone expected the blacks to be able to read, which was illegal? but anyway), and did anyone notice any Native Americans? Because I sure didn't -- they were involved in this war, too. But hey, any movie that can make someone like me, who likes history but never got interested in this era, actually want to do things like follow the Freedom Trail and go to Bunker Hill and look at Paul Revere's house and Ben Franklin's grave, and the tree under which Geo. Washington gathered troops...and listen to the lectures at the monuments (!), that's gotta be a good thing. And really, if you have to have a major holiday blockbuster with action figures and all that...doesn't this beat something like ID4? If I had kids, I'd rather they had "Patriot" action figures...