The release of a new DVD version of Hugh Hudson’s “Revolution” — starring Al Pacino as a New York trapper who gets caught up in this country’s battle for independence — reminds us that Roland Emmerich’s “The Patriot” has some competition for the worst film about the American Revolution.

Originally released in 1985, Hudson’s movie has re-emerged in a director’s cut edition with a new edit and new ending, the addition of narration by Pacino’s character and a sort-of new title, “Revolution Revisited” (Warner Home Video, $19.97, rated PG-13). ”
“Revolution” was met with near universal condemnation and derision when it made its theatrical debut at the end of 1985. One prominent critic, Vincent Canby of The New York Times, described it as “a mess,” “giddily misguided” and “England’s answer to ‘Heaven’s Gate.’”
Why should we care about a movie that bounces incoherently from 1775, when the American colonies are in virtual revolt against Britain, through the bitter winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge to the Battle of Yorktown in 1781? Or that, even with Hudson’s new edit, characters show up in incongruous places in relationships that have never been adequately explained? Well, Hudson (“Chariots of Fire”) deserves praise for attempting to make a film about the American Revolution that: 1) recognizes that at the onset of the war the colonists were about evenly divided among rebels, Tories and those who didn’t take a side, and 2) shows how the Revolution affected ordinary people.
— Scripps Howard News Service