Stirring jingoism for Americans

Rating: 5/10 (4 August 2006)

The target audience was never a more willing pawn! I approached this viewing with an open mind, particularly as Scott is one of my all time favorite actors. Sadly, though I tried to keep pace with the unfolding events, the ceaseless pro-American propaganda eventually wore me down and I ended up leaving the room for other more interesting pursuits.
It's not that I resent nationalistic pride nor patriotic ferver by any nationality, be it the U.S. or any other nation, but this production just never stopped laying it on thicker than meringue on a lemon pie, beginning with Scott's pacing and prolonged opening pro-America bombast, against the backdrop of a gigantic American flag.
American readers who cannot understand what might be cloying about that performance might gain a bit of perspective by imagining any other nation being so represented at the start of a movie. Imagine, for instance, a gigantic Soviet hammer and sickle flag and a Russian general in full uniform spending ten minutes pacing in front of it and telling the audience how Russia will never lose and that Russians live to fight will plough through any enemy etc. etc. Wouldn't you roll your eyes? But then I'm not the target audience. You are.
But of the movie, when it finally got underway... We step into position as vicarious viewers of Patton as a fully developed General, and take up the story as Patton commands in his blustering style, the North African campaign. Battles are fought, jeeps roar around and are sometimes blown through the air, but no story ever seems to develop. It's just Scott roaring and behaving like Patton is expected to behave. As events progress to the invasion of Sicily, nothing new there either. Patton roars, Palermo is occupied, the infamous battle fatigued soldier gets slapped and Patton delivers the insincere apology, and on we go. It just got so dull that I finally gave up on the movie.
I must be in the minority though, because this films aggregate votes place it in the top 250!
I have to wonder however: The vote database compiles stats from gender, age and so on (females under 18 tellingly rate it at an average 5.5!) but voting demographics do not include nationality. I wonder how those statistics would look regarding this film? Edit: By gosh strike the last, I just found the very stats, and it is as I thought!