A wonderful Marriage of Blockbuster and educational Epic

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2004)

when i sat down to watch this movie I was a little weary as the people that made it were of "Independence Day" fame,which is a cool no brainer but as a student of Napoleonic history and also someone with a soft spot for revolutionary America I was very excited at the prospect of the Marriage of Blockbuster and historical epic and boy was i blown away!this is the only DVD I've ever bought that i have literally worn out the extras are cool for a student to learn the general background of that conflict,OK so the story is a little far fetched but not when you realize that the main protagonist is actually an amalgamation of several Colonial and minute men hero's of the war,the wonderful thing about the American Revolution compared to Napoleonic Epics was the scale,in most if not all of the battles there were 1000-30,000 at most where if one looks at the battle of Wagram (1809) there were some 80,000 killed or wounded alone,so as epics go the battle scenes are to scale,the battle of the cow pens for example was about 1000 on each side,easily digitized yet looking "epic",the colours are also worthy of a mention,never have i seen such beautiful colours in a movie,from the "magic hour" photography to the green fields full of dead blue and red coats,the acting is also excellent,Tom Wilkinson(the full monty) really making you believe (if one believes the clichés of the British Generals) Lord Cornwallis was asked to play himself!and of course the only glaring error is the red jackets on the Green Dragoons(they were called Green Dragoons because their jackets were green!),what a pity but understandable for audiences unfamiliar with the uniforms of eighteenth century Dragoons!Heath Ledger shines here,in what was probably his first big role and Mel is ...Delicious!Colonel Tavington ...well,rainforests have been turned into glowing words for this character,suffice to say he is worthy of his own Sequel!!(the original Character Banastre Tarleton that Tavington is based on had a very interesting life of his own and did not die in the war)on the DVD the Director talks about the Budget being curtailed all the time....one can only wonder if with a bigger budget could they have made a better picture,i think not,10 out of 10 for this brilliant,well acted,historically (kinda) accurate Epic and after the sins of Al Pacinos "revolution"(1984) which consigned Colonial epics to history perhaps we can await a plethora of Revolutionary War pix but none will match this Classic movie.