Oddly enough, Hollywood has produced remarkably few films about the American Revolutionary War, and only a few of them are good - a situation mirrored, on the other side of the Atlantic, by that of French movies about the French Revolution. From a military historian point of view, Drums... is certainly not among the best. It shows a prominent consensual bias - whereas the English and Loyalists are almost non-existent, the Patriots are too good to be true - which certainly disregards the complexity of the situation. However, this bias makes ample room for the depiction of the settlers' life, and thus for the evocation of the effect of war upon people. Therein lies the brillance of this film.
