Yar, you be here: The Patriot > Customer Reviews

The Patriot Customer Reviews (58 - 60 of 119 Reviews)

Blood libel
The high ranking this film receives illustrates what a potent force Hollywood can be and gives the lie to claims that people don't accept these kinds of films as factual. Sure, many viewers enjoyed it simply for what it claimed to be - an action movie set in the past - but reading the reviews many also accept it as more or less truthful.

How a German director could have the cheek to portray the British as proto-Nazis is beyond me. The church-burning scene was nothing short of a blood-libel on the British people and clearly implies that this sort of thing has always happened, and even been perpetrated by the only people to have stood against Hitler for the whole length of WW2.

For the record, such war crimes were more common on the rebel side and the closest equivalent came when irregulars slaughtered a village of native Americans loyal to the British. But hey, who cares about the "Indians", eh?

Why does this matter? Because at a time of real danger to its way of life, the main historical source for most Americans about their origins is a film that is not only widely simplistic and biased but wilfully distorts the truth to fit its own frankly weird agenda.

Fun maybe, but the reality is being played out across the world today where the same principles of "good n' evil" have been Bin Laden's best recruiting sergeant and are about to usher in a religious regime in Iraq you couldn't tell apart from Iran. You want WMDs? You'll have 'em.

Cheers Mel!


The Revolutionary War
Certinly a change of pace for director Roland Emmerich. Here is a period film about the American War for Independence. Farmer Benjamin Martin (always dependable Mel Gibson) is caught up in the War when his oldest son (Heath Ledger) enlists, and then his youngest boy is killed by brutial British commander Col. Tavington (ice cold Jason Isaacs). Benjamin enlists and takes a rag tag group of militia (including his oldest son) and begins a campain of guarrila warfare on the inflexable British Army. The film has a lot of relevence especially today than when it was released five years ago. Many families and communities are now torn apart by the Iraq War, just as they were then. It is a story of love of country (from Ledger), and of revenge (from Gibson). The rest of the film is populated with talented, sort of stereotype actors, like Chris Cooper and Tom Wilkinson. I also thought it was novel of Hollywood to make a movie about a war other than WWII. The special effects that Emmerich is nown for are reduced to mostly very realistic looking matte paintings in the background, like in Charlotte, South Carolina or some of the battle fields, where many thousands more troops were CGIed in; but that is cool, less is more! The real heart of this movie is Gibson and Ledger.

Shamelessly manipulative script!
As you must know Ronald Emmerich is the same director of Independence Day, and in this film he insisted again in a pretended patriot approach, when looking the dramatis personae through clean glasses and provided of serene objectivity, the movie is just a personal vengeance between a colon, and beloved father of seven sons and his hated, implacable and merciless British Officer played superbly by Jason Isaac, under the orders of Tom Wilkinson. Mel Gibson, appeals to his emotive memories enriching his character with proportional doses of Mad Max, Lethal weapon and Braveheart. The photography is extremely mesmerizing and its better merit, but even the brutal sequences of the wounds of the mortal cannons and a touching performance of Chris Cooper may dignify in its most legitimate splendor what it could have been a revitalization of the courage and honor and not becoming an overlong melodrama with unjustified and almost imperceptible mistakes as that sequence when the Troops arrive to town briefly after the sinister church's massacre. Have you ever been near a multitude of burn corpses and its and perceptible smell miles away?. The Troops come and no there 's no one capable to perceive it. Very strange don't you? Perhaps, were they strongly affected for a flue, and unable to distinguish it? That 's what it could be and all of us, the viewers ignored it.

Maybe with another script and another director the results would have been more eloquent!

Previous Page

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

Next Page