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The Patriot Customer Reviews (67 - 69 of 119 Reviews)

Enjoyable and emotionally compelling
The Patriot is a movie, not a documentary. I urge those who want to see a historically accurate film about the revolutionary war to find something else. This movie is a work of fiction and does not apologize for that.

Mel Gibson plays Benjamin Martin, a widowed father of seven. He is pressed, unwillingly, into the war as a Colonel of the militia, after a ruthless dragoon shoots and kills one of his children. From there the movie takes off and never lets up. Viewers are shown how the war affects different peoples: fathers losing innocent children (sometimes more than one), women having their homes burnt to the ground, wives and small children shot for information, a slaves quest to earn his freedom with a year's worth of militia service, even a town full of people locked inside of a burning church. There are also moments of levity as Benjamin Martin negotiates for a prison exchange with Lord Cornwallis, only for Cornwallis to learn that he has bartered for straw filled officers coats.

The Patriot also is a good-looking film. The filmography is excellent. Costumes, backdrops, and battlefields are so well done as to be almost a work of art. It is very visually impressive.

Like many movies about war, The Patriot does not blink in showing the sickening details of life on the battlefield. Those with a weak stomach need not apply. Small children should definetely not watch this movie.

The DVD provides lots of neat extras. There are the typical making-of type things as well as a featurette about how the battlefield scences were created. Viewers who like to hear about the creation of graphic effects will not be disappointed.

Silly
I felt psychic when I saw this movie. It's so full of cliched situations that I knew exactly how every scene and sub-plot would finish as soon as it was introduced...and just as in ID4, sub-plots were added by the barrow-full, to no real advantage. It was slightly fun at the beginning, seeing the violent scenes of Mel Gibson and the militia killing the British soldiers through surprise attacks. However the movie was 2:40, and I felt there wasn't enough substance to justify the long running time.

For a movie that purports to be historical, it was bizarre how race issues were altered. South Carolinan mansions were run by happy slaves, well-compensated for their labors, and watch for the token black guy who isn't given any lines except for explaining how the Revolution means freedom, and his desire to re-build the main character's house after the war is concluded. I can understand (if not approve) that the movie would want to gloss over slavery, but why lie about it?

The Patriot a perfect Fourth of July rouser
What is it about American wars that brings the best out of otherwise trivial filmmakers? Ten years ago, the glorious Glory came from "thirtysomething" creator Edward Zwick. Now, Godzilla's Roland Emmerich, about the last director from whom we could expect full-bodied characters, brings us The Patriot--in every sense of the word, the most beautiful movie of its year.

Part of the credit should probably go to screenwriter Robert Rodat who, as Saving Private Ryan proved, surely knows which patriotic buttons to push. Whoever should be credited, there's not a false move in this rousing three-hour tribute to American spirit. When they say "They don't make 'em like that anymore," point to this one as an example of how it can still be done.

And who knew Mel Gibson still had any actorism left in him? As Benjamin Martin, a reluctant war veteran who is finally moved to fight in the Revolutionary War when a redcoat kills one of his sons, Gibson sheds his familiar love-me mannerisms like an old winter coat. He never relies on cutesy tics, and not once does he strike a false note. His character elicits laughter, tears, and bloodshed, and for the first time in years, Gibson emotes an honest-to-gosh person on the screen.

The movie's basic point--stated outright by Martin early on in the story--is that the Revolutionary War was won by wily militiamen who served as a direct counterpoint to the straight-on British manner of battle. But that's about the only thing in the movie which is stated so blatantly. The dialogue, rather than being laden with jingoism, is appropriately sparse, letting the movie's considerable action tell the story. And as such, this movie is a perfect argument against gratuitous movie violence (despite its R rating)--it shows the devastating effects of war (Martin loses a great deal of his family, one by one) and yet doesn't linger on its horrific effects.

Gibson's magnificent underplaying and Rodat's spare screenplay seem to have invigorated the rest of the cast as well. Everyone from Jason Isaacs (the British colonel with a bug up himself about Martin) to Tom Wilkinson (terrific as British warlord Gen. Cornwallis) to Trevor Morgan (the actory smart-aleck in The Sixth Sense) as one of Martin's sons, seem just as juiced up as Gibson is.

I haven't told a great deal about the plot, have I? (I haven't even touched upon Caleb Deschanel's beautiful cinematography, or John Williams' best movie score since E.T.) And this is as it should be. Please just trust that you should devote nearly three hours to one of the most perfectly realized movie visions you're likely to see for a long, long time.

The Patriot is rated R, mostly for very graphic violence, though in context, a PG-13 would be far more appropriate. Its only dramatic effect is to get kids talking about the story, an opportunity that I'd imagine most history teachers and parents would welcome.

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