Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America, a review by Antares
Rebels and Redcoats: How Britain Lost America (2003)
50/100 - When I first endeavored to undertake this mini marathon, this was the documentary that intrigued me the most.
Liberty! The American Revolution,
The Revolutionary War and
The American Revolution all shared one thing in common, they were mostly told from the American perspective, with the latter being the most egregious in its chest thumping. But this documentary was made by the BBC and promised to give the British point of view on it's involvement and loss in the war. Unfortunately, the man who made the documentary, Richard Holmes, a military historian at Cranfield University in England, had some sort of agenda when he undertook this production. From what I understand, he was so incensed at Mel Gibson's film
The Patriot, that he felt the need to set the record straight. But instead of making a thought provoking assessment of what it was really like for the British during the struggle, he does exactly the same thing that Gibson did, he bashes his opponent with an almost gleeful passion. He constantly emphasizes the atrocities that the rebels inflicted on what he deems were honorable loyalists, while conveniently glossing over the same kind of acts perpetrated by the British regulars. George Washington is a greedy, slave owning, aristocratic hypocrite whose sole mission was to insure his wealth and status in the colonies. He also spends an inordinate amount of time on the slavery issue, conveniently forgetting or omitting the fact that England accrued most of its wealth through commerce in the slave, rum and molasses triangular trade route in the 17th and early 18th century. The Dutch may have started the slave trade, but England fine tuned it to a money making monster for almost a century. About the only thing he gets right is the omission by most American history books and curriculum's on the crucial involvement and success of the French during the war, whom with out their help, the rebels wouldn't have stood a chance of winning. If you're looking for a jaded, biased, and poorly made documentary on the Revolutionary War, then look no further than this waste of time and film.
What the color coding means...
Teal = Masterpiece
Dark Green = Classic or someday will be
Lime Green = A good, entertaining film
Orange = Average
Red = Cinemuck
Brown = The color of crap, which this film is(From Antares' Short Summations on December 12th, 2013)
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May 16, 2024, 02:34:03 AM
