This bloody celebration finally gives the American Revolution the epic it deserves.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
There's no denying that Emmerich's film, though a good half hour too long, keeps us watching.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Desmond Ryan
If Emmerich had any sense, he would have ceded the direction of the battle scenes to his star.
It's often corny, but it's never boring, and it'll sweep you up in its momentum if you give it a chance.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
While the film contains some terrific, realistically bloody battle scenes, it has a distinctly Germanic feel, both in its epic heaviness and in the peculiar way it revises the history of the American Revolution.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Does benefit from Gibson's charisma...Whether it is quite good enough is another question.
Charlotte Observer by Lawrence Toppman
The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Undeniably handsome..., but no cliché is left unturned, right down to the spray of toy soldiers falling from the hand of a dead child. Everything old isn't new again.
Emmerich might have had a masterpiece, but he'll have to settle for what comes close to being a must-see movie today.
Trots out more flag-waving wartime cliches than any movie since John Wayne's "The Alamo."