Having Your Cake And Eating It...

Rating: 10/10 (18 January 2003)

If you haven't yet experienced Patton - the movie, if you've experience the actual General you're probably not on this website - there might be several things stopping you: it might be that film your dad keeps going on about, or seem from afar to be a tragically outdated affair. Perhaps you don't like war films. All valid concerns, yet none need apply here.
Released in 1970, Franklin J. Schaffner's Patton manages to be a mix of the very best of 60s cinema - a classy, colorful, epic affair - while heralding many traits that would define the 70s. It is as much a war film as Lawrence of Arabia, whose lofty heights it does not quite reach, because it is, first and foremost, a portrait, drawn on a huge canvas befitting such a huge man. Just as with David Lean's classic, you'd be forgiven for expecting jingoism and a romanticized portrayal, and just as with that film, you'd be wrong.
Schaffner, though denied a place in the pantheon of great mid-century filmmakers, was far more than a technician. This is the man whose dedication and skill raised Planet of the Apes from silly B-movie to classic, and later gave us a surprisingly gritty vision of hell in Papillon. His gift for nuance and interesting contradictions is on solid display here, and while he peppers his film with impressively-staged and shot battle scenes, these only exist to say something new about our protagonist, all the better served by a rock-solid screenplay by Francis Ford Coppola.
All this was inevitably only going to be as good as the lead actor, and in George C. Scott, a master at crafting fascinating but not necessarily likable characters, the filmmakers got more than they bargained for. Scott lights the screen in every screen, eliciting a wide range of emotional responses, but never less than fascinating. While often charismatic and charming, he does not hesitate to come off as a thug and a bully at times, creating a character of surprising depth.
This great film owes its enduring appeal not to nostalgia but a rare level of excellence. Regardless what your opinion is of older films, epics or war flicks in general, this is unmissable.