Excellent

Rating: 8/10 (21 June 2012)

Director Franklin Schaffner's 1970 film, Patton, is a film that falls just shy of overall greatness, unlike his previous film, Planet Of The Apes, even though both had excellent scripts, were unconventionally shot, had great acting performances, and were films that fundamentally altered their subgenres, biopics and science fiction. It is a film that, while it's clearly not a great film, does not offer up an obvious reason. It starts off brilliantly, with Patton's famous address to the film audience, and then, well, becomes, in many ways, a routine biopic- at least when it's not about Patton directly, for George C. Scott owns the screen like few actors ever before him had. No, it's when we see other characters, or the big battle scenes, that the film becomes pedestrian. And that 20% or so of pedestrian film lowers the rest of the film's inarguable greatness to merely near-great status.
Patton is not a great film, but in its flaws it delineates much of what a great film can be, and just how little of that needs to stem from the idea of a visionary or an auteur. As such, and along with Casablanca, it stands as one of the great arguments against the notion that films of quality must be wrought from the power and inspiration of a singular source. Franklin Schaffner, in fact, is proof that great art can come from people who are not gifted with innate greatness, just as the real General George S. Patton proved the opposite can also be true, and the two ideas not mutually opposing. As for the film, watch it for Scott's performance, watch it for a sense of American history (pro and con), and watch it because it's great entertainment, if not great art. Not all art need core into one's soul, sometimes pricking the flesh is enough. As such, Patton's a great prick.