If only the film hadn't been allowed to bloat up to two hours and forty minutes, on the theory that more is better. If only John Williams' score weren't so poundingly overblown, banal and repetitious. Having said that, we can find some good things in the film. In fact the film gives Benjamin's group a hideout in the swamp and a total of fewer than thirty men. But there's also a clear-eyed view of death in that time.
Children die, having done nothing wrong except to find themselves standing in the wrong place.
They also kill, and we see that strange mixture of excitement, fear, and guilt flash across their faces. In the film's best sequence, the British have captured half of Benjamin's little band, while he has captured Cornwallis's pair of Great Danes. He comes to Cornwallis under a white flag, with the two dogs, to propose a prisoner exchange. He points out eighteen British officers, standing in the distance, surrounded by his men. He will exchange them for the eighteen now held by the British.