To paraphrase Frankenstein, "Movie bad!"

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

This movie did to movies about the War for Independence what "Pearl Harbor" did to movies about WWII. Yes, the cinematography was good, so the movie was interesting, visually, but lacked accuracy. And beyond the lack of accuracy, the story and characters were trite rehashes of stock characters. Where to begin? With Tavington, loosely based Sir Banastre Tarleton, the Loyalist(not regular Army) commander of the British Legion? Tavington is written more like a stock Hollywood Nazi than anything else, and everything he did was predictable. With Cornwallis, written and played like a weak fop, rather than the able career officer and politician he was? Cornwallis may have lost the final campaign of the War, due more to lack of support from Howe and the arrival of the French, but he was assigned later as Governor of India. And then there is Martin. Mel Gibson is a good actor, but he is given nothing to work with here. C'mon, who owned a plantation of that size in the Carolinas and paid freed slaves to work it? PC nonsense, shame on the author. If you want to see a dramatization of events from this war, find and rent "The Crossing," produced two years ago for A&E. It tells the story of Washington's crossing, without adding a lot of crap just to sell the story. One last note--The toy soldiers Martin's son played with and which were later melted down for dramatic effect did not exist and would not until after 1870.