Last December I wrote about the movie Revolution staring Al Pacino as a fur trapper who gets caught up in the American Revolution. The movie was a colossal box-office disappointment and had never been released on DVD until this year. I have finally had the opportunity to watch a version of the film
Al Pacino and the director Hugh Hudson reedited and changed the ending of the film. I can’t really give an opinion about the original film. The new version adds a narration and cuts 10 minutes. Why wasn’t the film accepted back in 1985? Here’s one theory by Hudson.

Q: You say on the DVD, referring to Pacino’s character, that America in 1985 was not ready for an “anti-hero.”
A: The movie heroes were, what? Stallone, Schwarzenegger. And Reagan. Reagan was a true hero to the American people, in a way. Pacino plays a grunt, a soldier, a resistant man, resistant to going to war, to fighting, to being a part of society. He was a roughneck, trading furs. An anti-hero, really. He says, “It’s not my fight.”

Like George Bush is to blame for every problem faced in the 2000s Ronald Reagan is still a liberal whipping boy for the dreadful 80s. President Eisenhower was immensely popular during the 1950s and the movie The Searchers staring John Wayne is considered a classic. John Wayne played the anti-hero Ethan Edwards. The real problem with Revolution is that it’s a terrible movie.

At the beginning the American colonialists are just an angry mob. Pacino’s boat is seized by the mob and then inexplicably his young boy “joins the cause.” After that it’s just one boring event after another. The problem with the movie isn’t the historical interpretation or Pacino’s reluctance to fight, but the dreadful plot. It’s just not a fun story to watch. Back in December I wrote “It [Revolution] certainly cannot be worse than Mel Gibson’s The Patriot.” I’m not so sure, but I know I won’t go out of my way to watch either film again.