Old Hollywood Myths Peddled Anew

Rating: 1/10 (26 February 2006)

This film is most frustrating in the way it misrepresents the nature of the war and the nature of the British rulers from whom the patriots "freed" themselves.
The first myth is that a few minutemen fought off an empire. In reality, the British government was trying to run the war on the cheap so that the army was always under-supplied and short of men. This prevented them from properly following up their consistent success against the Americans in the field. Eventually, France and Spain saw the opportunity to further their own colonial ambitions by joining the war on the side of the Americans and, by taking away maritime supremacy, made it impossible for the British to win.
The second myth is the nature of the British ruling class at that time. We are presented with the main villain who is a thinly disguised representation of Banastre Tarleton, one of the most effective commanders on either side. He is characterised as an oily Edwardian toff with an Oscar Wilde accent and the airs of a prince of the blood. In fact, Tarleton was from a middle class, Liverpool family. At that time Liverpool was a dynamic and growing world commercial centre. Its culture and atmosphere was much more akin to the Chicago of the 1880s than the leafy shires of Hollywood-England with country houses, mi-lords, milkmaids and faithful family retainers.
The Tarletons and their ilk were very "American" in their aggressive pursuit of wealth which they then used to purchase high positions in society. Young Banastre did not get his commission in the army through the nobility on his family tree. It was bought with hard cash earned by the family from the shipping trade. His relatively high rank at an early age was awarded in recognition of the ability he displayed in the field. He was by no means unique in this respect. Indeed, the character of the British officers would be much better modelled along the lines of Lawrence Harvey and Donald Wolfit in "Room at the Top" than the Merchant and Ivory anachronisms this film offers.
As to the cruelty ascribed to Tarleton and vividly practised by his proxy in the film, there may have been some truth to his having killed troops who had already surrendered. It does happen in war. But there is little evidence of a sustained policy of murder on his behalf. However, his ability to win even when at a disadvantage was certainly a problem for the enemy. No doubt inflating his reputation for ruthlessness was a useful American propaganda ploy to convince their notoriously unsteady troops that surrender or flight was not necessarily going to save them from the fury of "Bloody Ban" and his redcoats. It was sold to them as a case of fight or die.
Certainly, his alleged cruelty was not seen as generally representative of British treatment of the colonists. This is evidenced by the fact that he was the only commander of note not invited to a dinner to celebrate the end of the war attended by American, British and French officers.
Furthermore, this reputation did not follow him home where he returned and was elected to represent Liverpool in Parliament for many years before an honourable retirement to Shropshire.