I love this film..True it seems a story of 1970's (An anti-war take on the American revolution )but the photography is so very good in this film it is pure eye candy to watch.Donald Southerland is parliculary great to watch as he plays a very complex and amazing character known as Sgt Major Bill Peasly-He all but steals the show in the film and it is Bill Peasly I am left thinking most about in this film.The last tragedy of this film is the soundtrack-what happened to such a great soundtrack-can't find it anywhere.Revolution is certainly a work worth purchasing, viewing as Pacino is great to see in a different role then his normally foul mouthed gangster roles but rather as a loving father in this film.
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Revolution: Revisitied
Added 11/8/2009
I thought that this movie was excellent and has a great message. I think it is unforturnate that more Americans are not interested in their very own history. We truly are "the great experiment" as we were called back then when this country was being founded. The actors are A list and the scenery is authentic.
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Virtually a new film....
Added 10/16/2009
REVOLUTION:REVISITED clears up the storyline of the original and delivers a gritty realistic film that puts the American Revolution into a tight and fascinating narrative.
Those who saw the original will be pleasantly surprised at Pacinos performance, in what is a rarity for him, a period film. Well worth seeing, and well worth adding to your collection on all counts.
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It should be seen
Added 9/3/2009
I happen to be living in England when this film was made. The producers came to our base to recruit African Americans for minor roles in the movie. I went up to see the production in progress in Kings Lynn, an old Dutch town on the Fens. It was built around the same time as old New York and the buildings in the center looked like what you would imagine an old Dutch settlement like New York would have looked. THe whole town was involved as extras. All they had to do was take down the electric, remove the parking meters and cover the street with dirt and you had old New York. Some ships masts were planted behind the buildings and it looked like a harbor. The costumes and production values in this movie are superb. The best since "Barry Lydon" in the 1970's. Pacino and Southerland were very good and believable. Kinski is always good to look at and she was an obvious star and not just an extra on the set. Pacino, by comparison, was hardly recognizable as a movie star. His make up and costume was that good. The rest of the movie was set on farmland near the town of Swaffam in East Anglia and on the southwest shore of England along the Channel. It's too bad the movie was so miss marketed at the time. But here it is again and really better than ever because it's a lot cheaper than it would have been had it been a hit.
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REVOLUTION REVISITED IS WORTH VISITING
Added 8/4/2009
Splendid film in its gritty retelling of events of the revolutionary war from the perspective of minor and barely educated persons, REVOLUTION is an over-looked gem of filmmaking by a British director. THE PATRIOT is a disappointing work in its own right, but when compared with this version of similar events, it is hardly worth discussing.
REVOLUTION REVISITED is certainly a work worth purchasing, viewing, and even showing to students. I showed the original version to college students in China before I purchased this version. I had a little trouble accepting Al Pacino as a Scottish illiterate because of his accent, but the interview between Pacino and HIgh Hudson at the end of the REVISITED version made it clear to me that Tom Dobb had been torn from his Scottish roots as an infant and transplanted to New York. I thought that Pacino was still being Pacino, as he was in many of the gangster and cop roles viewers had come to expect on the screen -- a man who liked to lose his temper frequently and chew up the scenery. As a former Scottish citizen who had surrendered his identity and accent to the New England influence, his role here became more believable. He is still Pacino with his temper tantrums, but he is also a man who misses his dead wife and clearly feels his own limitations as a person unable to totally understand the necessity to separate from the British and carve out a new nation based on human freedom and dignity.
As a professor in China, I am not supposed to bring which is called propaganda into the classroom, but I do let films like REVOLUTION and DEAD POET'S SOCIETY speak for themselves, punctuating my own perspective that students should learn to think for themselves. REVOLUTION makes a perfect background for the teaching of American literature. JOHNNY TERMAIN is okay for this purpose, but it lacks the feel of realism that the washed-out colors and documentary feel of some of the scenes in REVOLUTION bring to the consciousness.
The new REVISITED version, which I have not yet shown in a class, has two major differences. The voice-over by Tom Dobb as he explains his lack of education and his love for his deceased wife, as well as his bewilderment at being caught up in what "ain't my fight," fills in a few blanks that are missing from the original version. The voice-over narration was removed from the revisited version of the excellent film BLADE RUNNER, but here it seems to work, as long as a teacher uses the sub-title function when showing the film to non-native speakers. The second major difference is the lack of the happy reconciliation between Dobb and Daisy, the member of the loyalist or Tory family who finds her own soul in becoming part of the revolution against the king. This version is more believable, if a little sadder. We do not know whether or not Daisy survived the slashing blade of the effeminate British officer whom she had earlier stabbed in the groin with a long pin. It did seem unbelievable that she could totally recover from such a heavy sword and show up apparently unharmed or totally recovered at the end of the original, yet I understand that since Americans like happy endings, this reuniting of the two star-crossed lovers must have seemed preferable to Gold Crest or Warner Brothers. Now, in the REVISITED version, we are left to focus, like Dobb, on his son, his son's new wife, and his son's friend -- as well as the Native Americans who helped his son recover from the brutal treatment of the British Sergeant-Major, so well-played by Donald Sutherland. Like Dobb, we are left wondering whether or not Daisy did actually survive intact.
Donald Sutherland is a superior actor who spends too little screen time in this film. As a non-pretty boy actor -- unlike his less-remarkable son -- he lends a presence and dignity and believability to any film production that he graces with his presence. He is not the total villain that we often see in films like THE PATRIOT; even though he does have an understated desire for little boys, he can also reveal his own conflicted feelings about the violence that he is expected to execute. Yes, he does severely cripple Dobb's son Ned, but before he does so, he pauses to reflect on the cruelty of the order that he must carry out at the command of his superior officer. Whether he does so because of his fondness for little boys or because he recognizes the excessiveness of the punishment that he must carry out might be unclear, but he does show that he is not without humanity. He is clearly a religious man who tells his men that God in on their side -- something that the colonials believe as well -- and after he is severely wounded at the end of the film by Ned, he is spouting the Lord's Prayer while waiting to see whether or not Ned will finish him off. That Ned does not is because Sutherland's character is both unarmed at that point and praying.
Minor characters in the film, such as the two British officer who visit the home of Daisy's family while Daisy's sisters sing an authentic song of the period. are also inspired and noteworthy.
Clearly, REVOLUTION REVISITED is a film version worth visiting. I hope that many viewers interested in a good film, even on DVD instead of in a movie theatre, will find it as rewarding as I did.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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I love this film..True it seems a story of 1970's (An anti-war take on the American revolution )but the photography is so very good in this film it is pure eye candy to watch.Donald Southerland is parliculary great to watch as he plays a very complex and amazing character known as Sgt Major Bill Peasly-He all but steals the show in the film and it is Bill Peasly I am left thinking most about in this film.The last tragedy of this film is the soundtrack-what happened to such a great soundtrack-can't find it anywhere.Revolution is certainly a work worth purchasing, viewing as Pacino is great to see in a different role then his normally foul mouthed gangster roles but rather as a loving father in this film.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Revolution: Revisitied
Added 11/8/2009
I thought that this movie was excellent and has a great message. I think it is unforturnate that more Americans are not interested in their very own history. We truly are "the great experiment" as we were called back then when this country was being founded. The actors are A list and the scenery is authentic.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Virtually a new film....
Added 10/16/2009
REVOLUTION:REVISITED clears up the storyline of the original and delivers a gritty realistic film that puts the American Revolution into a tight and fascinating narrative.
Those who saw the original will be pleasantly surprised at Pacinos performance, in what is a rarity for him, a period film. Well worth seeing, and well worth adding to your collection on all counts.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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