Review: The Patriot

Movie: The Patriot

Main Actors: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger and Joely Richardson (For a complete list, see IMDB)

MPAA Rating: R

Passionate Expressions: There are a few of them; the beginning of the movie opens with some pretty dark themes, a lot like Braveheart.

Useless Vulgar Language: There is some. But nothing really jumped out at me.

Sex in a Good Light: I would have to say no.

Sex in a Bad Light: At one point Heath Ledger spends the night with the family of his “lady friend”. Her parents seem concerned about her virginity and their solution to the problem is to tie Heath Ledger to the bed. So while the movie appears to say one thing it really means the other. Also, the sister of Mel Gibson’s dead wife seems to think her boobs are amazing and spends every scene showing us as much of them as she can without actually showing anything. There is no “nudity” in this film.

Manly Violence: There is lots of it, it is a war movie after all.

Action Violence: Nothing fell in this Category.

Pointless Violence: Nope.

Manly Rating: B

Scorecard
Cinematography: B
Visual Effects: B
Sound/Score: B
Story: D
Acting: C

Food to Watch With: Fish and Chips. Let's kill red coats and eat their food too!

Plot Synopsis: A father avenges his son's death by winning the American Revolution.

Review: I had such high hopes for this movie and I left the theater feeling so confused. The fight scenes were wonderful, the small scenes they did of the Continental Congress were a little off but some good representations of viewpoints back then were well represented and, in fact, the first half hour to 45 minutes of the movie were excellent. Mel Gibson’s character was not entirely predictable. He gives many reasons for not wanting a war with England, but his main under-riding theme is that he wants to take care of his kids which is totally understandable as they have no mother. His sons, also understandably, want to help fight the war and one of them, Heath Ledger, does. This is where things started to fall apart for me. Gibson joins the war effort because some Red Coats kill one of his sons (hmmmm, sounds a little like Braveheart) then Gibson goes bonkers and kills lots of people (hmmmm, also sounds like Braveheart). Mel finally goes and joins the Americans for the fight and is given a Colonel ranking and then he starts turning the tide of the war by basically discovering Guerilla Warfare all by his lonesome. The fights with the British remain good, but amazingly tactics of Mel and his band of Merry Killers make the rest of the Americans look like idiots (I don’t think that was intentional, but that’s what happened). The movie then takes another turn for the worse; it focuses on Heath Ledger’s character. I think that Ledger has a hit and miss record with his acting abilities and this was a miss, a really big miss. The movie starts to lose itself more and more and culminates in a scene where Mel Gibson not only provides the tactics to win the war to the rest of America’s idiot officers but does so by single-handedly rallying the Americans to charge the British. So, yeah, I didn’t like it. But that might be because I was hoping for an American Revolutionary War movie and what I got was a revisionist history Mel Gibson hero movie. Blah.

Life Lessons: There were some, but they got lost. I guess that what I learned (from this movie and from Braveheart) was that if I ever turn into an evil military or political entity, and I run into someone that looks like Mel Gibson, I should just leave him alone.

Summary: What can I say, I love this country, and while I can accept a little bit of leeway taken by the filmmakers to make their story work, don’t destroy American History for your desired ending. Especially not an ending as lack-luster as that.

Would I Watch This Again: Only if I’m in the mood to see Mel’s "Kill" face.